Assessing obstacles & inequalities in gender & LGBT+ political leadership & careers: an intersectional perspective

Although in the last two decades women’s parliamentary presence has significantly increased worldwide, female politicians rarely break the glass ceiling and access to top government positions. Moreover, while recent literature has opened to the study of women’s leadership, we know almost nothing about LGBTQIA+ politicians’ careers. The GENPOLEAD project studies the role of gender, gender identity and sexual orientation in accessing political leadership, with a special focus on Italy.

As a research group, we investigate the transversal and intersectional logics of these two dimensions of inequality, by exploring and identifying the main obstacles for gendered leadership to arise.