How do political leaders around the world successfully create legislation which addresses gender-based violence, disability rights and LGBTQ+ rights? As David Hudson, Claire Mcloughlin, Chris Roche and Heather Marquette have discussed, it is not enough to attribute the success or failure of these initiatives to vague ideas of charismatic leadership or the field being ripe for change.
Instead, Rebecca Gordon and Victoria Hasson have set out to learn, through interview data with parliamentarians, what skills and qualities these political leaders believe enabled them to achieve success in their mobilisation for inclusive legislative change. The findings are both reassuring – in that clear, definable skills and qualities did appear to help parliamentarians create change – and concerning – in that these are often not the skills and qualities in which politicians are trained or even encouraged.