Drude Dahlerup:
Professor emerita, Dept. of Political Science, University of Stockholm and honorary professor at Roskilde University
Born 1945. Danish and Swedish citizen.
1. Education
Cand.scient.pol. (candidate of political science) from the University of Aarhus, Denmark, 1974
2. Positions
1974-1983 Teaching and research positions at the Department of Political Science, University of Aarhus, Denmark
1981-1982 Visiting Scholar at Radcliffe College, Harvard University, Boston, USA
1983-1985 Project for the Nordic Council of Ministers: “Women in Political Decision – Making Processes in the Nordic Countries -Old Barriers and New Opportuni- ties”
1985-1989 Coordinator of the BRYT project, a large inter-Nordic actions research project, the aim of which was “to develop and test methods for breaking down the sex segregation of the labour market,” financed by the Nordic Council of Ministers and the governments of the five Nordic countries
1987-98 Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science and Cekvina, Centre for Gender Studies, University of Aarhus
From 1998 Professor at Dept. of Political Science, Stockholm University. Since 2017 as professor emerita.
2002-03 Visiting Professor, Birkbeck College, University of London
2013-14 Visiting Professor at Faculty of Social Science, Radboud University, Nijmegen
2017 – Honorary professor at Roskilde University, Denmark
AWARDS:
Dansk Kvindesamfunds Mathildepris 1990
The Gender and Politics Research Award, 2013, European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR)
3. Selected assignments:
- 2013-16 Member of the Global Civil Society Advisory Group to UN Women’s Executive Director (first to Michelle Barchelet, later to Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka).
- International advisor on women’s political empowerment, electoral systems and gender quota systems to Kenya, Bhutan, Sierra Leone, China, Cambodia, Egypt, Tunisia, Kosovo, Ivory Coast, Nigeria (for UN Women, UNDP, Inter-Parliamentary Union, IPU, Swedish Kvinna-till-Kvinna and the Danish Institute for Parties and Democracy).
- 2015-2021 Member of the Steering Board of REMESO, Institute of Research on Migration, Ethnicity and Society. Linköping University.
- Editorial Committee member for the EPS journal (European Political Science).
- 2011- Member of Scientific Council of the Think Tank Arena Idé.
- 2016-19 Member of Committee (Social Sciences) for Wallenberg Academy Fellows Program, Royal Swedish Academy of Science.
- Expert for www.iKNOWPolitics.org, the International Knowledge Network for Women in Politics
- Member of the Swedish Research Council’s (VRs) committee on international post-doc, 2012-2015.
- On the editorial advisory board of the journal Equal Opportunities International
- Member of the board of KVINFO, The Danish Center for Information on Women and Gender, Copenhagen, 1998-2003
- Vice President of the Danish government’s Council for European Politics, 1993-2000
- Head of Cekvina, Centre for Gender Studies at the University of Aarhus, 1991-92 and 1997
- Active in various NGOs on women’s affairs
- Has served on numerous evaluations committees for professorships, associate professorships, PhD thesis etc. in the Nordic countries, Australia, United Kingdom, Ireland, Bangladesh, South Africa and others.
4. Profile
Drude Dahlerup has published extensively on electoral gender quotas; Politics and Gender; social movements; history of women’s movements; feminist theory.
On the history of the women’s movement:
* The Redstockings. The Development, Ideas and Impact of the Danish Redstocking Movement 1970-1985, vol I-II. Gyldendal 1998 (in Danish).
* The New Women’s Movement. Feminism and Political Power in Europe and the USA. Sage 1986, ed. by DD.
On women’s political representation:
In 1988 Drude Dahlerup wrote a most cited a article on the concepts of ‘critical mass’ and ‘critical acts’: “From a Small to a Large Minority. Women in Scandinavian Politics” in Scandinavian Political Studies, vol. 11, no 4, pp.275-98. A piece on the critical mass discussion revisisted was published by DD as “The Story of the Theory of a Critical Mass”, Politics & Gender vol.2, no.4, 2006, pp.511-22. “The use of the critical mass theory in scholarly and public debates”, in Rosie Campbell and Sarah Childs (eds): Deeds and Words. Gendering Politics after Joni Lovenduski. ECPR studies, 2014.
In the late 1980’s Drude Dahlerup wrote the book: We have waited too long. Handbook in women’s representation, which showed the different strategies for increasing women’s representation in each of the five Nordic countries. The book, which was published in Danish, Finnish, Icelandic, Norwegian and Swedish for the Nordic Council of Ministers became instrumental for the successful work to increase women’s political representation in Scandinavia.
The book, Breaking Male Dominance in Old Democracies, edited together with Monique Leyenaar, was published by Oxford University Press in the summer of 2013. This book include cross-national chapters and chapters on 8 ‘old’ democracies: New Jersey (US), New South Wales (Australia), United Kingdom, Sweden, Iceland, Denmark, Netherlands and Germany.
On Electoral Gender Quotas:
Drude Dahlerup has been the leader of a large international research project: ”Gender Quotas in Politics – a Key to Equality?”, financiered by the Swedish Research Council. The book Women, Quotas and Politics, edited by Drude Dahlerup, was published by Routledge in 2006. This book is the first global analysis of the use of quotas, based on research in all major regions in the world. See also Drude Dahlerup & Lenita Freidenvall: “Quotas as a “Fast Track” to Equal Political Representation for Women: Why Scandinavia is No Longer the Model’, International Feminist Journal of Politics, 7, 1: 26-48, 2005. On the many articles written by DD on gender quotas, see under publications.
A pocket book, Kvotering (written in Swedish with Lenita Freidenvall) was published 2008 by the SNS Förlag.
Together with International IDEA and the Inter-parliamentary Union, IUP, Dahlerup and her research team constructed the global website http://www.quotaproject.org which shows all countries in the world that apply some type of electoral gender quotas: http://www.quotaproject.org
On the Arab Uprisings:
The coming book, Double-Edged Politics to Women’s Rights in the MENA region, edited by Hanane Darhour and Drude Dahlerup will be published by Palgrave at the end of 2019. For the last decade, Drude Dahlerup has been engaged in research and consultancy on the empowering women in politics in the Middle East and North Africa, especially during and after the Arab Uprisings. She has written on quotas in the Arab parliaments, and on the Moroccan quota system (with Hanane Darhour), see list of publications. As partner in a KVINFO-project for the Danish Foreign Ministry, she was engaged in organizing conferences for researchers and NGOs in Morocco and Jordan. The project “New Avenues for Women in Public Life in the Arab Region” (2012-14) was based on a partnership with CAWTAR, Center of Arab Women Training and Research, based in Tunis, and financed by a grant from the Swedish Research Council for international research collaboration. Studies of the State of the Art of research on women in public life in the Arab region and in the Nordic countries have been published under this project. Nordic-Arab conferences were organized in Stockholm and Tunis. Special emphasis has been given to developing and organizing Nordic-Arab PhD courses for young scholars, who study women in public life.
On the political gender equality regime in Denmark:
Drude Dahlerup 