Twice as Hard, Half as Good - University of Birmingham

What are women’s pathways to political office? And what are the barriers they face along the way that can explain the continued lack of women’s representation in elected office? To answer these questions, this research project reconsiders the “gender penalty” faced by women candidates to take into account their everyday experiences on the campaign trail. We ask whether women are working “twice as hard” to achieve similar levels of electoral success.

To better understand how these everyday encounters on the campaign trail, both online and offline and in the media shape women’s campaign efforts and chances at electoral success, this ambitious 5-year ERC-funded research project employ a mixed-methods approach, bringing together ethnographic participant-observation of candidates on the campaign trail in four countries (UK, Spain, Netherlands, Turkey) with quantitative media analysis, candidate surveys and a battery of items administered in Round 11 of the European Social Survey to create a cross-national gender attitudes index. This rich data generates new insights into the causes of women’s continued under-representation in politics.

Research objectives

Reconceptualise voter bias by understanding the dimensions of voter sexism
To understand how and under which conditions women candidates experience sexism and violence on the campaign trail
To understand how the media shape the “gender penalty” and the “twice as good” effect

Outputs and impact

Special Issue:
European Journal of Politics and Gender: ‘Political violence and its emotional consequences’ (forthcoming)

Conference presentations:

British Sociological Association, 2023
Association of Social Anthropologists, Birmingham, 2025
Political Studies Association, 2025, Birmingham
European Conference of Politics and Gender, Ghent, 2025

Written evidence

Addressing Candidate Security in Contemporary Election Campaigns submitted to the Speaker's Conference on the security of candidates, MPs and elections

Workshops and events

Collaborative ethnography: culture and politics in parliaments in the UK and the US, Emma Crewe, University of Exeter (July 2023)
Between Westminster and Brussels: Putting the “Parliament” in Parliamentary Ethnography, Cherry Miller, University of Exeter (June 2023)
Misogyny In The Modern World: From Politics to Violent Extremism, University of Exeter (October, 2022)

Research team

Professor Susan Banducci (PI), University of Birmingham
Julia van Zijl (PhD Researcher), University of Birmingham
Dr. Hyerin Seo (Postdoctoral Researcher), University of Birmingham
Dr. Jess Fagin (Postdoctoral Researcher), University of Birmingham
Dr Alona Dolinsky (Postdoctoral Researcher), University of Birmingham (starting January 2026)

Project Partners

Professor Katharine Tyler, University of Exeter
Dr Sofia Collignon, Queen Mary University of London
Dr Joshua Blamire, University of Wolverhampton, UK
Dr Marta Fraile, Institute of Public Goods and Policies (IPP), Spain.
Dr. Alejandro Tirado Castro, University Carlos III of Madrid, Spain.
Dr Daphne van der Pas, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Proffessor Ali Çarkoğlu, Koç University, Turkey
Dr Esra İşsever Ekinci, Koç University, Turkey.