Parliamentary ethnography and feminist institutionalism: gendering institutions – but how?

Abstract

Gender and politics scholars are conceptualising parliaments as workplaces, drawing on feminist institutionalist frameworks. Ethnography is a promising methodology that can be used to capture how gender is repeated over time. Ethnography offers scholars opportunities to explore heterogeneity by analysing actors as multiply positioned – with and through institutional rules – and affords attention to ambiguity and contradictions by examining everyday ambivalences. Furthermore, it can nuance conceptions of agency, treating agency as in process rather than as static. Despite these potentials, this article finds that the pairing between ethnography and institutionalism has been problematised and considers these concerns in depth. The diversity of feminist institutionalism across epistemological leanings makes for an important reflexive exercise about what ethnography can offer and how it can be practised. More specifically, the article argues that feminist institutionalism can be thickened with ethnography and by drawing on Butler’s concepts of interpellations, undoing and iterability.<br /><br />Key messages<br /><ul><li>Ethnography is not a homogeneous methodology and there are several approaches that can be chosen from across epistemological divides.</li><br /><li>Feminist institutionalists have made important contributions to integrating heterogeneity, agency and contradictions in their research practices, and feminist institutionalism may be a powerful pairing with ethnographic methodology.</li><br /><li>If we think through agency, heterogeneity and contradictions even further with/through Judith Butler’s concepts, this can add value to feminist institutionalism and deepen our understanding of ‘how’ gender is reproduced in parliaments.</li></ul>

Feminist institutionalism(s)

“…(309), the book provides no straightforward answers. A separate publication (Miller, 2021) suggests that the main methodological contribution might lie in combining feminist institutionalism and ethnography. Chiva (2018) seeks to explain male dominance in post-communist Central and Eastern Europe focusing on 'processes of reproduction' (4) and drawing on historical institutionalism, especially its notion of path dependence.…”

“…To obtain an overview of recent research in feminist institutionalism and to see how the literature has developed, eight books are selected. The research monographs by Staab (2017), Chiva (2018), Thomson (2019), and Miller (2021) in Palgrave Macmillan's ‘Gender and Politics’ series all deal explicitly with the relationship between gender and institutions. The first four books in Rowman and Littlefield's new series on ‘Feminist Institutional Perspectives’ are research monographs by Erikson (2017) and Freidenvall (2021) and edited volumes by MacRae and Weiner (2017) and Waylen (2017).…”

“…Miller's (2021, 2) study of the UK House of Commons as a gendered workplace aims to ‘flesh out’ feminist discursive institutionalism 8 . She does so by drawing on Judith Butler's work rather than Vivien Schmidt's.…”

“…In this way, Miller is able to impose a structure on her rich collection of observations from her field research. In a footnote, Miller (2021, 116) claims ‘these categorisations emerged within the fieldsite and were widely accepted in discussions with participants’, but the book provides no evidence of this and leaves open how and in what way career cycle, citizenship, and public service constitute discursive institutions. In fact, discourse only plays a role in the discussion of the ill-fated attempt to appoint Australian Carol Mills as House Clerk (see also Miller, 2022) and the discussion of sexual harassment.…”

“…Despite section headings like ‘What Does a Feminist Discursive Institutionalist Approach to Parliaments Look Like?’ (309), the book provides no straightforward answers. A separate publication (Miller, 2021) suggests that the main methodological contribution might lie in combining feminist institutionalism and ethnography.…”