Study title

This research project provides a comprehensive gendered analysis of the contemporary UK Conservative party. Face-to-face semi-structured interviews were carried out with conservative peers (19 male and 8 female) and conservative MPs (9 male and 10 female). Focus groups were also conducted with 7 groups of floating and non-partisan voters (n=63 individuals) and 6 groups of party members (n=83 individuals). A pre-post questionnaire was also conducted consisting of an internet panel of the membership of the Conservative Party. This gathered their opinions and is in an SPSS data set (n=83 individuals, with 65 variables.)

This three-year project provides for a comprehensive gendered analysis of the contemporary Conservative party in order to assess the extent to which it is incorporating women and their concerns. Drawing on mainstream political science accounts of parties and party systems, comparative party literature on centre-right parties and feminist accounts of women's political representation, the research examines legislative recruitment and identifies the attitudes, roles and influences of women and men within the parliamentary and extra-parliamentary party. It also explores changes in policy on 'women's issues' since 1990, how the party acts on women's legislation as it passes through Parliament, and considers policy developments under David Cameron's leadership. Further, it explores whether the party's efforts to increase the number of Conservative women MPs, along with its policies on women's issues, will be favourably received by voters. The research uses a range of methods: a postal survey, in-depth interviews, analysis of parliamentary behaviour, focus groups with voters, analysis of party manifestos and policy documents, as well as secondary analysis of existing data sets, including the British Representation Studies and the British Election Studies. Resulting data will be subject to both qualitative and quantitative analysis.