Young women have taken the lead in a new wave of feminist and democratic protests that have erupted across a wide range of countries, North and South. These movements raise a range of political and analytic questions: to what extent is it useful to identify the recent wave of activism in terms of a new generation of activists? How different is the 'new' Feminism to earlier forms, and what differences and continuities divide and unite the generations? These questions are explored through examining the characteristics common to contemporary feminisms, and through case studies of different campaigns in Brazil, India and Malawi.

The COVID-19 pandemic has gendered implications for women's time and resources. The use of informal institutions that pose obstacles to women's electoral viability may also be particularly consequential at a time of rapid change, when election dates and procedures are being amended because of health concerns. Together, these dynamics suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic may impact women's electoral participation, support, and viability in meaningful ways. The November 2020 Brazilian municipal elections provide an opportunity to explore this. Employing data from an original survey of eligible individuals and aspirant candidates, we find that the main obstacle to women's representation is not personal political ambition or efforts but women's perceptions of their access to support for their candidacies. In the face of greater challenges, resilient aspirants are choosing to work harder to compensate for potential losses in campaign support and funds.

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For over twenty years, gender quotas have been adopted and revised in Latin America and the world. This chapter investigates whether the type of authorship of gender quota adoptions/revisions is relevant to the strength of policy designs. The debate is unsettled: while some scholars portray male incumbents as interest-seeking actors, others view state actors as promoters of gender equality. Using a newly developed index of the strength of gender quota designs, I find support for the proposition that non-legislative actors are crucial in strengthening quota policies. I find that policy revisions carried out by non-legislative actors are, on average, stronger than those enacted by legislative actors and that non-legislative actors respond more rapidly to policy weaknesses than their legislative counterparts.

Six electoral cycles since the implementation of Brazil’s gender quota, just 15% of the 513 members of the Chamber of Deputies are women. We ask how parties’ use of informal institutions mediates the effectiveness of the gender quota. Drawing on data from more than 4,000 state-level party organizations, we show that parties employ informal practices that intentionally and non-intentionally interact with gender equity rules to affect women’s political representation: the intentional nomination of phantom candidates (“ laranjas”) allows parties to comply with the letter of the quota law, without effectively supporting women’s candidacies—to the detriment of women’s election; meanwhile, the extended use of provisional commissions to minimize oversight on candidate selection poses an obstacle to the quota and women’s candidacies and election more generally. Quota resistance characterizes an instance of both the likely inadvertent effects of informal institutions employed for non-gendered motivations and party leaders acting to preserve their own power.