Strategic Descriptive Representation: Progress or Pitfall for Gender Justice?

Strategic descriptive representation occurs when political parties increase women’s descriptive representation (the number of women in office) as a deliberate strategy to appeal to a broader set of voters. In this chapter, we situate the theory of strategic descriptive representation in the broader representation literature, focusing on the representation of women. We then highlight how the growing presence of women in historically gender-traditional populist radical right (PRR) parties motivated our study of this phenomenon in Europe. We discuss our key findings related to the causes and consequences of the strategic descriptive representation of women in PRR parties, and address questions about whether descriptive representation is still a normative good in this context. Finally, we suggest several promising lines of inquiry to move the study of strategic descriptive representation forward, including exploring its impact on party fortunes, its implications for the symbolic representation of women, and its relevance beyond Europe.