Redefining the Public Sphere: Education Reforms and the Inclusion of Women in Public Participation (REPS)
Funding: Norwegian Research Council’s Young Research Talents scheme, 8 mill. NOK (943,000 USD/782,000 EUR). Personal grant.
Project period: August 2021 to July 2025.
Summary: Women’s inclusion in the public sphere – first as activists and voters and later as political candidates, policymakers, and organizational leaders – sets the 20th century apart from the previous ones. The REPS project studies how political institutions and public policies can promote women’s public participation. By collecting, systematizing, digitizing, and analyzing unique Norwegian and global data, REPS contributes with new knowledge on the causes and consequences of how women gained increased access to politics, policymaking, and powerful labor market positions. In this effort, we pay particular attention to the two-way relationship between education reforms and gender parity the public sphere in Norway. REPS may help to pinpoint how we achieve a fairer distribution of power, positions, and privileges between the genders.
The first gender revolution was the enfranchisement of women. Across Western countries, the share of adult citizens eligible to vote increased from 43% in 1900 to 80% in 1930. Women’s suffrage organizations were key in the quest for enfranchisement. Yet we have surprisingly little systematic evidence about who the suffragists were, what induced them to mobilize for suffrage, and how they altered the social norms about women’s participation in the public sphere. REPS therefore examines whether the large-scale entrance of women into the teaching profession created an occupational class of women with both the resources for and interests in mobilization for the right to vote. This ongoing study – which also collects and digitizes historical data on education reforms and women’s political activism – thus addresses the crucial question of how mobilization to enfranchise half of the adult population was driven forward. In a next step, REPS will also analyze how women activists influenced Members of Parliament to pass suffrage reforms.
The importance of education and women’s political activism for redefining politics and the public sphere did not stop with the demand for suffrage. REPS therefore also analyzes how enfranchising women subsequently changed the political landscape, political participation, policymaking, and the wider public sphere in a more gender equal direction. In ongoing works, we study how the enfranchisement of women influenced party competition and the passing of policies that women had a special interest in (such as further education reforms), and how women’s activism and policy reforms influenced women’s formal political participation. Together, these studies piece together a more coherent understanding of how education reforms, women’s activism, suffrage, and later political participation shaped each other to produce a more gender equal public sphere.
Despite women’s activism and despite achieving equal political rights, social norms were still stacked against women replacing men as political candidates, policymakers, and organizational leaders. Women remained severely underrepresented in these powerful positions. Indeed, the second gender revolution – which would close the gender gap in higher education and bring women onto party lists and into political and civil offices – had to await the late 1960s in Norway and other advanced democracies. To better understand women’s inclusion in influential public positions, REPS also investigates this second revolution. In particular, the project studies how education reforms (including pre-school, primary, and higher education reforms) may give women the resources and experience needed to stand for election and acquire leadership positions in politics and the labor market. We also investigate gender inequalities in access to prominent policymaking positions among highly educated women and men. Preliminary results from these studies suggest that although education reforms may improve gender equality, additional institutional reforms, especially gender quotas, may be needed to push access to high-powered positions closer toward gender parity.
In total, REPS aims to advance our understanding of the turning points in women’s inclusion in the public sphere. As stark gender differences in access to powerful public positions persist across the globe, insights from REPS will, hopefully, help to provide policymakers with a better understanding of how to promote gender equality in the public sphere.
REPS collects and digitizes a range of historical sources from Norway on women’s participation in the public sphere and education, which will be made available upon completion. These include historical education statistics (at the municipality level), women’s membership in suffrage organizations (at the individual level), party seat shares and women candidates and representatives in municipal councils, women book authors (individual level), and suffrage and secession petitions (individual and municipality level).
Co-participants: Sirianne Dahlum (University of Oslo), Stine Hesstvedt (ISF – Institute for Social Research, Oslo), Mona Morgan-Collins (Durham University), Magnus B. Rasmussen (University of Southeastern Norway), and Dawn Langan Teele (Johns Hopkins University).
Current research output related to REPS:
Published
Teele, Dawn Langan. 2022. “Gender and the Influence of Proportional Representation: A Comment on the Peripheral Voting Thesis.” American Political Science Review, FirstView
Skorge, Øyvind Søraas. 2021. “Mobilizing the Underrepresented: Electoral Systems and Gender Inequality in Political Participation.” American Journal of Political Science, EarlyView
Working papers
Skorge, Øyvind Søraas. 2022. “Petitions and the Electoral Mobilization of Women”.
Hesstvedt, Stine and Øyvind Søraas Skorge. 2022. “When are women used as policy experts? Partisan and institutional drivers of expert group appointments.”
Skorge, Øyvind Søraas. 2022. “Care for Career: Mothers, Toddlers, and the Impact of Pre-Schools on Female Leadership.”
Rasmussen, Magnus B. and Øyvind Søraas Skorge. 2022. “Partiaization: How National Parties Took Hold of Local Politics”.
Dahlum, Sirianne and Magnus B. Rasmussen. 2022. “Educated to Democratize? Education and Elite Support for Universal Suffrage.”
In preparation
Rasmussen, Magnus Bergli and Øyvind Søraas Skorge. “Partiaization and Suffrage: How the Mobilization of Women Voters Fostered Parties Local Presence.”
Lindvall, Johannes, Valeriya Mechkova, and Øyvind Søraas Skorge. “Teaching for Suffrage: How Teachers Spurred Women's Suffrage Activism.”
Dahlum, Sirianne, Magnus B. Rasmussen and Øyvind Søraas Skorge. “Women’s Activism and Voting for Suffrage Reforms: Evidence from Norwegian Roll Calls.”
Paulsen, Tine, Øyvind Søraas Skorge, and Dawn Teele. “The Public’s Purse: Women, Electoral Systems, and Spending Post Suffrage.”
Teele, Dawn, Carl Henrik Knutsen, Magnus B. Rasmussen, and Øyvind Søraas Skorge “Suffrage and the Instigation of Social Policies: Evidence from Norwegian Roll Calls.”
Dahlum, Sirianne and Øyvind Søraas Skorge. “Universities and Gender Norms: Evidence from the Establishment of Universities Worldwide.”
Dahlum, Sirianne and Øyvind Søraas Skorge. “Expansion of Higher Education and Local Gender Norms: Evidence from Norway.”
Skorge, Øyvind Søraas. “Expansion of Higher Education and Women’s Political Candidacy.”
Data: REPS collects and digitizes a range of historical sources from Norway on women’s participation in the public sphere and education, which will be made available upon completion. These include historical education statistics (at the municipality level), women’s membership in suffrage organizations (at the individual level), party seat shares and women candidates and representatives in municipal councils, women book authors (individual level), and suffrage and secession petitions (individual and municipality level).