‘To the surprise of absolutely no one’: Gendered political leadership change in Northern Ireland
| DOI | 10.1177/13691481211018308 |
| Published date | 01 May 2022 |
| Date | 01 May 2022 |
| Author | Neil Matthews,Sophie Whiting |
| Subject Matter | Original Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/13691481211018308
The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations
2022, Vol. 24(2) 224 –242
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/13691481211018308
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‘To the surprise of absolutely
no one’: Gendered political
leadership change in Northern
Ireland
Neil Matthews1 and Sophie Whiting2
Abstract
The office of political party leader remains one that women rarely occupy. In the largest
comparative study of party leadership to date, only 10.8% were women. One region which has
made significant advances in this area is Northern Ireland. Since 2015, the two largest parties, Sinn
Féin and the Democratic Unionist Party, have experienced a rapid feminisation of their leadership.
Such a development is particularly remarkable given Northern Ireland’s historically poor record
on gender equality. This article explores the puzzle of gendered leadership change in Northern
Ireland to reveal that the transition was primarily facilitated through the parties’ informal practices
rather than embedded structural change. In doing so, it demonstrates the relative importance of
party- and system-level factors on women’s political presence. As a power-sharing democracy, this
case also provides comparative insights for those interested in addressing persistently low levels
of female representation in post-conflict settings.
Keywords
consociationalism, Democratic Unionist Party, gender, gendered opportunity structures, intra-
party democracy and organisation, nationalism, Northern Ireland, political party leadership, post-
conflict, power sharing, Sinn Fein
Introduction
The office of political party leader remains one that women rarely occupy. In the largest
comparative study of party leadership to date, only 10.8% were women (Wauters and
Pilet, 2015). As such, the ‘law of increasing disproportion’ holds true in most cases – that
is, the proportion of women in party offices is inversely related to the importance of the
position (Putnam, 1976). One case where this law has been broken, however, is Northern
Ireland. Since 2015, the region has witnessed a feminisation of party leadership, with the
1School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK
2Department of Politics, Languages and International Studies, University of Bath, Bath, UK
Corresponding author:
Sophie Whiting, University of Bath, Claverton Down, UK, BA2 7AY.
Email: s.whiting@bath.ac.uk
1018308BPI0010.1177/13691481211018308The British Journal of Politics and International RelationsMatthews and Whiting
research-article2021
Original Article
Matthews and Whiting 225
two largest parties, Sinn Féin and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), electing female
leaders.1 Arlene Foster was elected DUP leader in February 2015, while Michelle O’Neill
and Mary Lou McDonald were appointed Sinn Féin ‘leader in the north’ and President in
January 2017 and February 2018, respectively.2 Such a development is all the more
remarkable given Northern Ireland’s poor record on political gender equality and resist-
ance to broader national and international trends affecting women’s rights (Galligan,
2013; Moon et al., 2019).3 Over 30 years of violent conflict has also instilled an enduring
masculinised political culture within Northern Ireland’s power-sharing institutions
(Mackay and Murtagh, 2019).
This article addresses the puzzle of gendered leadership change in Northern Ireland,
providing an original assessment of the factors underpinning the selections of Foster,
O’Neill and McDonald. These include the primary endogenous and exogenous factors
identified by scholarship on women’s political presence: party ideology; party organisa-
tion; party performance; institutional context; and post-conflict opportunities. These fac-
tors are outlined below before being systematically examined in respect to the Northern
Ireland case. Our analysis is based on a range of primary and secondary sources, includ-
ing party constitutions and rulebooks, news publications, and existing scholarship on the
DUP and Sinn Féin. By combining these sources, we are able to provide both a detailed
account of the selection of the three women leaders and, most importantly, interpret the
meaning of decisions taken by two highly secretive organisations (see Bevir and Rhodes,
2003). While these five factors feature in different ways for each party, we find that the
outcomes in all three cases owe more to the parties’ informal practices and ad hoc strate-
gies than formal modifications or deeply embedded structural change at the system level.
As a result, we conclude that the Northern Ireland ‘success story’ should be celebrated
with caution. If the parties’ strategic priorities or organisational approaches change, then
such rapid progress could be easily reversed. The Northern Ireland case, therefore, pro-
vides a wider lesson for those interested in why gendered leadership change occurs and
how such advances in political gender equality can be sustained.
Scholars interested in gender equality in other post-conflict societies or multi-level
settings should also find the Northern Irish case to be instructive. Prolonged violent con-
flict during the ‘Troubles’ not only influenced gender dynamics in the region, but also
provided the backdrop in which the DUP and Sinn Féin emerged as political parties
(Braniff and Whiting, 2017). The institutional solution to that conflict, in the form of a
consociational power-sharing arrangement set within the wider devolved political settle-
ment of the United Kingdom, also saw the DUP and Sinn Féin overtake their more moder-
ate rivals to become the largest parties within their respective communal blocs of unionism
and nationalism in 2003. An in-depth analysis of the Northern Irish case, therefore, pro-
vides important insights for future comparative research on gendered party leadership
change in other similar cases.
Explaining gendered leadership change
Understanding the gendered nature of political parties and institutions, including the
dynamics that structure and interact with the process of leadership selection, requires
acknowledging how both formal and informal rules and cultures can hinder or facilitate
women’s political representation (Annesley and Gains, 2010; Bjarnegård and Kenny,
2016; Kenny and Verge, 2016; Krook, 2010). Helmke and Levitsky (2004: 727) define
these informal dynamics as ‘socially shared rules, usually unwritten, that are created,
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