Finding a space for women's intersectionality? A review of Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians

Gender-focussed parliamentary bodies are a common institutional mechanism for gender mainstreaming and the promotion of gender equality, although in these pursuits, many are overwhelmed by the challenge of limited resources, institutional credibility, and legitimacy, and institutional partisanship. Among these bodies, relatively little is known about the Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians (CWP) network which is active across nine diverse regions of the globe, and in 2019 celebrated its 30th anniversary. This article highlights the work of the CWP at both an international and regional level, and identifies important differences between CWP chapters and other gender-focussed parliamentary bodies that mean they are able to work more harmoniously on a restricted, but targeted, range of policy and advocacy issues. Finally, the article considers whether this cross-jurisdictional mechanism provides women MPs a safe space to share their intersectionality across sexuality, age, party, and geographic region, when other – national – mechanisms fail.The Clerk of one of the Australian jurisdictions informally noted that he personally solicits the CPA membership fee from members at the beginning of each legislative term (discussion with author, April 2019). This fund is called the Regional Strengthening Fund and currently stands at £10,000 per region. In Australia, the CWP use it to support their annual conference (correspondence between author and Lesley Clark, June 2019)