In the APSA Public Scholarship Program, graduate students in political science produce summaries of new research in the American Political Science Review. This piece, written by Ximena Caló, covers the new article by Daniel M. Smith, Alexandra Cirone, Dawn L. Teele, Gary W. Cox, and Jon H. Fiva, “Hidden Majoritarianism and Women’s Career Progression in Proportional Representation Systems”.
Norway is one of the most gender-equal countries in the world. Women hold nearly half the seats in parliament, two women have served as prime minister, and women have held the top executive office for 18 of the past 43 years. Yet even in Norway, women’s rise to power has been slower than these numbers suggest. Daniel M. Smith, Alexandra Cirone, Dawn L. Teele, Gary W. Cox, and Jon H. Fiva show that some key positions in Norway’s political system act as majoritarian bottlenecks that have slowed women’s careers for decades, and that parties developed creative workarounds to push women past them.
Many democracies use proportional representation systems, in which parties present ranked lists of candidates and win seats based on their share of the vote. These systems are generally considered better for women’s representation than “winner-take-all” systems, where only one person wins each seat. But Smith and colleagues argue that no system is proportional all the way down. Even within proportional systems, some key positions can only be held by one person. Local mayor and the top-ranked spot on a party’s candidate list are inherently winner-take-all, regardless of the broader electoral rules.
These one-person positions matter because they serve as stepping stones in a political career. In Norway, local mayors are more likely to be nominated for national elections, and top-ranked candidates on party lists are more likely to be appointed to cabinet. If women are shut out of these gateway roles, it could slow their advancement at every level above.
To test this idea, the authors drew on a century of data on candidates who ran for Norway’s national parliament between 1921 and 2021, as well as records on elected mayors since 1971. This allowed them to track men’s and women’s careers from local office all the way to the cabinet.
The data confirm that women have been consistently underrepresented in these winner-take-all positions. As women began entering local councils in the 1970s and 1980s, the gap between their share of council seats and their share of mayor positions widened significantly. By 1987, women held about 30 percent of council seats but only 7 percent of mayorships. A similar pattern emerged at the national level, where men dominated the top spot on party lists even as women’s overall candidacies grew.
“If these hidden barriers persist in one of the world’s most gender-equal countries, they are likely present in other democracies too.”Despite these bottlenecks, women’s representation in parliament and cabinet did not fall behind as much as one might expect. The reason, the authors argue, is that Norwegian parties developed workarounds. When women did reach the mayor’s office, parties promoted them to national candidacies at higher rates than men in the same position. About 8 percent of women mayors won a seat in parliament, compared to roughly 3 percent of men. Similarly, women who secured a top-ranked list position were more likely to be appointed to cabinet than men in the same spot. Parties also elevated women from second-ranked positions into the cabinet more often than men.
These workarounds were not accidental. Historical accounts and surveys of Norwegian politicians suggest that parties faced mounting pressure to meet informal targets for gender balance at every level of office, from women’s movements within party organizations, competition between parties for women’s votes, and growing public expectations. When the pool of eligible women at a given career stage was smaller than the pool of men, parties responded by advancing a larger share of the women available.
The findings carry implications well beyond Norway. If these hidden barriers persist in one of the world’s most gender-equal countries, they are likely present in other democracies too. Most countries that use proportional representation also feature winner-take-all mayor positions and single top-ranked list spots, creating similar potential bottlenecks for women. Whether parties elsewhere adopt comparable workarounds remains an open question, and one that could shape the pace of women’s political representation around the world.
- Ximena Caló is a PhD student in the Department of Social and Political Sciences and the AXA Research Lab on Gender Equality at Bocconi University. Her research interests include political economy, political behavior and representation, comparative politics, and gender and politics. Before starting her PhD, she was a Pre-Doctoral Fellow at the AXA Research Lab on Gender Equality at Bocconi University. She holds an MSc(Res) in European Studies from the London School of Economics (LSE, 2020) and a BA in Political Science and Latin American Studies from Boston University (2018). In Spring 2026, she will be a visiting researcher at Stockholm University and the SNF Agora Academy at Johns Hopkins University.
- SMITH, DANIEL M., ALEXANDRA CIRONE, DAWN L. TEELE, GARY W. COX, and JON H. FIVA. 2025. “Hidden Majoritarianism and Women’s Career Progression in Proportional Representation Systems.”, American Political Science Review, 1–19
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