Informal norms and political practices can act to facilitate or block changes to formal rules, with important consequences for efforts to promote gender equality. In this book, leading scholars develop sophisticated analytical frameworks and provide detailed empirical knowledge to further our understanding of the gendering of informal institutions.The book begins by assessing our current theoretical and empirical knowledge and outlining the remaining gaps in our understanding around the way gender interacts with informal institutions. It takes up the challenges of gender equality in informal institutions though a feminist institutionalist lens. The empirically based chapters explore the role of informal institutions in three areas of concern for feminist scholars: political recruitment; the executive; and policy and practice; and examine the practical and methodological challenges of researching informal institutions. Using the insights generated in the volume, the final chapter develops a research agenda for future work on gendering informal institutions, considering the potential to design or alter informal institutions, and of different approaches and methodologies.

1. Analyzing Gender in Informal Institutions: An Introduction, Georgina Waylen / 2. What's in a Name? Mapping the Terrain of Informal Institutions and Gender Politics, Louise Chappell and Fiona Mackay / 3. Local Heroes and 'Cute Hoors': Informal Institutions, Male Over-Representation and Candidate Selection in the Republic of Ireland, Leah Culhane / 4. AExcavating Informal Institutional Enforcement Through 'Rapid' Ethnography: Lessons from the Australian Construction Industry, Louise Chappell and Natalie Galea / 5. Party Office, Male Homosocial Capital and Gendered Political Recruitment, Tánia Verge and Sílvia Claveria / 6. Disentangling Informality and Informal Rules: Explaining Gender Inequality in Chile's Executive Branch, Susan Franceschet / 7. Leveraging Informality, Rewriting Informal Rules: The Implementation of Gender Parity in Mexico, Jennifer M. Piscopo / 8. Negotiating Gender Equity in a Clientelist State: the Role of Informal Networks in Bangladesh, Sohela Nazneen / 9. An "Alternate" Story of Formal Rules and Informal Institutions: Quota Laws and Candidate Selection in Latin America, Magda Hinojosa / 10. Who, Where and How? Informal Institutions and the Third Generation of Research on Gendered Dynamics in Political Recruitment, Elin Bjarnegård and Meryl Kenny / 11. Conclusion, Georgina Waylen