Non-elite women in politics: Participation, power, and patriarchal norms

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What does the standard seat count really tell us about women's political power? In this episode of VoxDevTalks, Soledad Artiz Prillaman discusses her review of the research into non-elite women's political participation. The conversation explores who counts as 'elite', why that distinction matters for policy, and what the evidence actually shows about the barriers women face when trying to engage with politics.

Defining elite and non-elite in political life

The term 'elite' is used widely in political science but without consistent definition. The framework Prillaman and her co-authors adopt centres on access to power: political elites are those with access to political power, a category that includes not only elected representatives but also business executives and academics whose socioeconomic position affords them greater influence. Non-elites are those who lack that access.

The distinction matters because most policy aimed at reducing gender gaps in politics targets elite women – through quotas, for instance – on the assumption that placing women in positions of power will produce benefits for women more broadly. The evidence, however, is mixed, and rests on an assumption about shared preferences that does not hold up.

"We would only expect a focus on elites to truly reflect what non-elites care about if we imagine they have the same preferences. There's a lot of evidence to suggest that they don't. That non-elite women, everyday women, women who don't have access to power, have different preferences from women who have more power."

Why income is not the key to participation

The dominant theory in the literature holds that material constraints – lack of income, childcare, transport – are what prevent women from participating in politics. At the individual level, income turns out to be generally uncorrelated with turnout and political participation. At the country level, GDP per capita predicts women's non-elite political participation in some places but not others.

Labour force participation correlates positively with political engagement, but not because of the income it generates. Prillaman points instead to the social infrastructure of work: networks, information flows, and connections formed in the workplace appear to drive participation, not wages themselves.

The role of networks and information

Access to information about politics is heavily shaped by social networks, and those networks look very different for men and women. In research conducted in rural India, men reported discussing politics almost exclusively with other men outside their households. Women, by contrast, reported that roughly half of their political discussions took place within the home.

"If the information that women are getting is coming to them through the men in their homes, that is shaping how they might even imagine their political participation space, and it's shrinking the set of information that they could have access to."

Networks also apply social pressure, either encouraging or discouraging participation. Women's groups, microcredit organisations, labour unions, and friendship networks outside the household have been shown to expand women's information and provide a support structure for political engagement. They also offer a degree of protection from the backlash women disproportionately face in political spaces.

What the evidence says about quotas

Electoral quotas are the most widely adopted policy tool for increasing women's political representation, with over 100 countries having introduced some form of quota. The theory is that putting women into elite positions will cascade into greater participation and more responsive governance. The evidence here is, again, mixed.

Quotas have increased women's representation in some contexts, but have not closed the gender gap in political participation among non-elite women. In many countries, researchers observe no effect on non-elite participation, and in some cases a negative one. Institutions can also be co-opted: parties may field women in seats they are unlikely to win, or, as observed in some Indian constituency campaigns, feature the male party patron's image alongside a female candidate's name.

"Gender equality does not have a silver bullet solution, and attempting to find a single policy that solves these very deeply entrenched gender gaps is what will lead us to playing a game of whack-a-mole."

Varieties of patriarchy and what they mean for policy

Patriarchy shapes women's political participation in every context, but the form it takes varies significantly. In parts of South Asia, explicit and socially sanctioned control – requiring women to seek permission to travel or directing their vote choices – produces some of the largest gender gaps observed anywhere. In the US and Europe, the mechanism is more often internalised: women come to view politics as not their domain, producing large gender gaps in political interest that translate into gaps in participation.

Prillaman's research shows that in highly controlled environments, many women vote in line with their male gatekeeper's preferences rather than their own, even when those preferences diverge. In at least half of cases surveyed, women said they would follow the gatekeeper's choice.

"In many contexts, even though women have the right to vote and do show up to vote, they're still manifesting that same pattern, but not because they want to, and not because their preferences look the same as their husbands, but because the way the strictness and the way that these patriarchal norms manifest really constrain their behaviour and their choices."

Bottom-up change and collective action

Despite these constraints, women are not simply waiting for top-down reform. Collective action – via women's groups and local mobilisation – has enabled women in highly restrictive contexts to gain access to political institutions and, through that access, to begin renegotiating norms. Rather than requiring norm change as a precondition, politics itself becomes the space in which norms are contested and transformed.

India provides a striking illustration. Despite historically low participation and some of the world's largest gender gaps in political engagement, women voted at higher rates than men in recent national elections. That shift was driven by bottom-up mobilisation, and parties have responded by offering policies that target women as a constituency.

What policymakers should do

For those designing interventions, Prillaman argues that context-specificity is essential. Policymakers should first identify which domains of participation are lagging and understand the nature of norms in their setting – whether the barrier is explicit control or internalised disengagement. Where women's demands are collectively beneficial and non-threatening, framing participation as mutually advantageous can ease resistance. Where demands challenge existing power structures, investment in protective infrastructure and coalition-building becomes more important.

Reference

Medie, P A, and S A Prillaman (2026), "Nonelite women's participation in politics," Annual Review of Political Science, 29: 163–193.