Explaining the Gender Gap in Pathways to Parliament: Comparisons across Western Europe.

This paper investigates variation in women and men's paths to parliament. We draw on cross-national survey data of national and European parliamentarians from 15 west European democracies to analyze the function of gender in parliamentarian pathways. Comparing across these 15 democracies, we examine whether the function of gender in parliamentarian pathways varies by political, social and personal factors in parliamentarians' environments. Focusing in particular on the variation in the nature of gender-egalitarian political, social and personal contexts, we determine whether women and men converge, diverge or demonstrate stable distances in their pathway attitudes under these varied contexts. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]