Doing Politics Differently? Applying a Feminist Institutionalist Lens to the UK's Women's Equality Party

The UK Women's Equality Party (WEP) was established in 2015 in order to 'bring about change by winning - support, votes and seats'. It has thus far recruited tens of thousands of members and run candidates in national, devolved and local elections. This article provides one of the first empirical analyses of this new actor in UK politics. Adopting a feminist institutionalist lens we examine the extent to which WEP 'does things differently' by looking at discourse, formal party rules and informal ways of doing things 'on the ground'. Drawing upon a set of semi-structured interviews, observations of local and national party meetings, and document analysis, we argue that while WEP has to some extent tried to set up alternative participatory structures and new 'ways of working', it has also at times fallen back on more traditional, centralised and hierarchical modes of party organising, as well as informalized practices, which are more typically associated with male-dominated parties.