Past Seminars

17 October 2025

Charlotte Cavaillé, Toulouse School of Economics (with Victor Gay)

Women’s Suffrage: Explaining the French Exception

Despite its early experiment with male suffrage, France was one of the last countries in Europe to extend the vote to women. Existing accounts of this French exceptionalism argue that members of the Radical party, which controlled the upper house, blocked suffrage extension because they believed women would vote for pro-Church anti-system parties. These accounts focus on opposition to suffrage extension, emphasizing legis- lators’ expected political losses under new electoral rules. In contrast, we examine support for suffrage extension, emphasizing legislators’ expected losses absent institu- tional change. This alternative account does not rely on strong assumptions about women’s perceived pro-Church bias. As this article demonstrates, it better explains differences in voting patterns between the upper and lower houses in the aftermath of World War I, a critical juncture for women’s political rights. It also highlights the link between support for women’s suffrage and support for proportional representation while providing new insights on the relationship between war and suffrage extension.

26 September 2025

Tanushree Goyal, Princeton University

Representation from Below: The Grassroots Origins of Women’s Political Power

After decades on the political sidelines, women are now at the heart of India’s development agenda. Political parties are placing them front and center: shaping platforms, driving mobilization, and crafting electoral appeals around their participation. Representation from Below traces how this transformation began far from the halls of power, taking root in local politics and rising through party organization. It develops a new theory of inclusive party-building to explain how women in local politics transform party organizations to increase responsiveness and advance representation at the highest levels of politics. Drawing on fieldwork, original data, and experimental research, the book shows how women in local politics, responding to career incentives, began building grassroots chapters of women’s wings and recruiting other women into activism, quietly reshaping party structures from the ground up. As women became indispensable to electoral mobilization, party leaders responded strategically: adapting platforms, expanding welfare schemes, and opening paths to higher office. The book challenges the view that political parties stand in the way of women’s empowerment, or that women in deeply patriarchal systems lack agency. Instead, it highlights how the very constraints and spaces once defined by women’s marginalization: households, gender norms, and women-centered networks, become unlikely engines of democratic change. When parties are built inclusively from below through women’s participation, the ripple effects extend far beyond the local level, transforming national politics and offering lessons that resonate historically and well beyond India’s borders.