Published and forthcoming research

Peer-reviewed articles

Erikson, Josefina and Cecilia Josefsson "Feminine Leadership Ideals and Masculine Practices: Exploring Gendered Leadership Conditions in the Swedish Parliament." Politics & Gender, Online First. doi.org/10.1017/S1743923X23000090 

Erikson, Josefina, Sandra Håkansson and Cecilia Josefsson (2023) “Three Dimensions of Gendered Online Abuse: Analyzing Swedish MPs’ Experiences of Social Media” Perspectives on Politics, 21 (3): 896-912. doi.org/10.1017/S1537592721002048

Erikson, Josefina and Cecilia Josefsson (2022) “The Parliament as a Gendered Workplace: How to Research Legislators’ (Un)Equal Opportunities to Represent" Parliamentary Affairs, 75(1):  20-38. doi.org/10.1093/pa/gsaa049 

Erikson, Josefina and Cecilia Josefsson (2021) “Equal playing field? On the intersection between gender and being young in the Swedish” Politics, Groups, and Identities, 9(1): 81-100. doi.org/10.1080/21565503.2018.1564055 

Josefsson, Cecilia (2020) "How candidate selection structures and genders political ambition: Illustrations from Uruguay". European Journal of Politics and Gender, 3(1): 61-78. doi.org/10.1332/251510819X15693187680761 

Erikson, Josefina and Cecilia Josefsson (2019) “Does Higher Education Matter for MPs in their Parliamentary Work? Evidence from the Swedish Parliament” Representation, 55(1): 65-80. doi.org/10.1080/00344893.2019.1581077 

Clayton, Amanda, Cecilia Josefsson, Robert B. Mattes, and Shaheen Mozaffar (2019) “In Whose Interest? Connecting Gender Gaps in Elite and Mass Policy Preferences.” Comparative Political Studies 52(1): 69-101.  doi.org/10.1177/0010414018758767 

Erikson, Josefina and Cecilia Josefsson (2019) “The Legislature as a Gendered Workplace: Exploring MPs’ Experiences of Working In the Swedish Parliament.” International Political Science Review 40(2): 197-214.  doi.org/10.1177/0192512117735952 

Clayton, Amanda, Cecilia Josefsson and Vibeke Wang (2017) “Quotas and Women's Substantive Representation: Evidence from a Content Analysis of Ugandan Plenary Debates.” Politics & Gender 13(2): 276-304. doi.org/10.1017/S1743923X16000453 

Johnson, Niki and Cecilia Josefsson (2016) “A New Way of Doing Politics? Cross-Party Women’s Caucuses in Uganda and Uruguay.” Parliamentary Affairs 69(4): 845-859. doi.org/10.1093/pa/gsw011 

Martin Lundin, PerOla Öberg and Cecilia Josefsson (2015) ”Learning from Success? Are Successful Governments Role Models?” Public Administration 93(3): 733-752. doi.org/10.1111/padm.12162 

Josefsson, Cecilia (2014) “Who benefits from gender quotas? Assessing the impact of election procedure reform on MPs’ attributes in Uganda” International Political Science Review, 35(1): 93–105.  doi.org/10.1177/0192512113507797 

Clayton, Amanda, Cecilia Josefsson and Vibeke Wang (2014) ”Present without Presence? Gender, Quotas, and Debate Recognition in the Ugandan Parliament.” Representation, 50(3): 379–392. doi.org/10.1080/00344893.2014.951232 

Dissertation 

Adaptive Resistance: Power Struggles over Gender Quotas in Uruguay

Why and how do progressive social policies aimed at creating a more just and equal society fail? In seeking to increase our understanding of gendered institutional change in general, and gender equality policy failure in particular, this book explores the role of resistance among privileged political elites in accounting for such failures. To shed light on the adaptive nature of resistance and how resisting actors – status quo defenders – are both empowered and circumscribed by their ideational and institutional environment, a resistance stage model is developed. Mapped on to the policy process, this model outlines how status quo defenders adapt their resistance strategies across the phases of agenda setting, policy formulation, decision-making, and implementation. 

This theory of resistance is developed in conjuncture with an empirical study of a 30-year long process to adopt and implement an electoral gender quota policy in Uruguay. Gender quota policies have been the most common electoral reform in the past three decades and although the rapid and worldwide diffusion of this type of policy have contributed to increase the proportion of women in parliaments across the globe, many such policies have also failed in fast-tracking women in to positions of political power. While previous research primarily has explained quota failure by pointing at technical deficiencies, this book views such failures as the result of strategic and idea-based resistance among (male) political elites. Drawing on a large number of interviews with Uruguayan political elites, three extensive quota debates in the Uruguayan Parliament, and party electoral lists, this book carefully examines the power struggle over reform in this country. It shows how powerful quota opponents, seeking to ignore, stall, and undermine gendered institutional change, adapt their resistance strategies both across different political parties and over time, as women change agents manage to transform ideas and discourses. Taken together, this book furthers our understanding of the adaptive nature of resistance, why pervasive resistance emerges in some places, and the factors that uphold male political dominance, while also showing how progress and gendered institutional change can come about in such a resistance prone case as Uruguay.