Denmark is characterized as ‘a non-quota country’ and as the Nordic exception when it comes to women’s representation at the national parliamentary level. Women’s representation to the Danish parliament has stagnated at 37-39% since 1998.

The project focuses on internal, informal measures to promote gender equality in representation (or the lack thereof) and asks why some parties are the laggards while others have achieved high levels of women’s representation? The focus is ‘everyday democracy’ of political parties (the meso-level), exploring the diversity of practices and strategies for training, visibility and empowerment of women candidates as measures of gender equality/parity. The empirical analysis consists of five parties (both from left and right) in the Danish parliament.