Abstract:  Gender equality reforms implemented across various parliaments around the world have diversified. Introducing the thematic issue Gender Equality Reforms in Parliaments, we trace the context of making parliamentary institutions more gender-sensitive. We highlight both international organizations’ top-down efforts and grassroots movements’ bottom-up approaches and emphasize the complexities of descriptive, substantive, and symbolic representation. We argue that next to the broader setting, feminist institutionalism provided a critical lens to examine these relationships while acknowledging the need for gender-sensitive parliaments that prioritize gender equality. We illuminate contributions from both the Global South and North and pay particular attention to “extraordinary cases” as well as methodological, theoretical, and conceptual innovations, highlighting the challenges and opportunities in institutionalizing gender equality in diverse political contexts.

Keywords:  critical actors; gender equality; gender‐sensitive parliaments; governments; parliaments; policy reform; political parties; political representation; procedural reform

Published:   27 August 2024

Issue:   Vol 12 (2024): Gender Equality Reforms in Parliaments