Published Article – FEM-ABLE: Promoting women’s participation in the political domain

impact. Published Article

“A Fly in the Ointment”: The Barriers to Portuguese Female Political Participation

Universidade Lusófona, project coordinator of FEM-ABLE, has published a scientific article resulting from the research conducted within the project. Professors Carla Cerqueira (Porto University Center) and Sónia Lamy (Lisbon University Center), alongside Diana Choi Loureiro, a FEM-ABLE Project research fellow, have authored the article “A Fly in the Ointment: The Barriers to Portuguese Female Political Participation”. The study was published in the prestigious journal Social Sciences by MDPI.

Research Insights

The article explores findings from eight individual interviews with women in leadership roles across various sectors of the political sphere. It examines key barriers to female political participation, such as:

Media representation and lack of role models.
Double standards, stereotypes, and increased scrutiny of women.
The divide between administrative roles and decision-making positions.
Cultural norms that perpetuate gender imbalances.

This work highlights how these factors intersect to maintain the political arena as predominantly male-oriented.

Conference Presentation

In May 2024, Diana Choi Loureiro presented these findings at the I Feminist and Education Congress, One Hundred Years Later: Women, Rights, and Citizenship in Building Democratic Societies, held at NOVA FCSH’s Colégio Almada Negreiros in Lisbon.

For more details on this research, check the article here.

FEM-ABLE:

Promoting women's participation in the political domain

Co-funded by the Citizens, Equality, Rights & Values Programmeof the European Union

Project Number: 101088295

2023 - 2025

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or European Commission. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.