In the early 21st century increased attention was being paid to the role of parliaments and specialised parliamentary bodies in promoting gender equality or ‘gender mainstreaming’. Both the Inter-Parliamentary Union and individual scholars began publishing case studies and overviews of the work of gender-focused parliamentary bodies.

At the Third European Conference on Politics and Gender in Barcelona in 2013 Marian Sawer and Joan Grace convened a meeting to establish an international network linking researchers, co-ordinating research projects and promoting cumulative knowledge on the subject. The new network was called 'Gender-Focused Parliamentary Institutions Research Network' or GenParlNet.

Members of the research network are interested in how these relatively new parliamentary bodies came into being, critical actors involved, linkages with other agencies promoting gender equality and the engagement of women’s civil society organisations. Research includes identifying the characteristics of the different types of gender-focused parliamentary bodies, how they relate to different institutional contexts and how effective they are.

Since 2013 GenParlNet has organised panels at three IPSA World Congresses and three European Conferences on Politics and Gender (details under Events). It has already published two selections of these papers in Parliamentary Affairs – Vol 69 (4) 2016 and October 2020 and one selection in Politics, Groups, and Identities – Vol. 8(3) 2020.

The current convenors of GenParlNet are Josefina Erikson of Uppsala University and Tania Verge Mestre of the University Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona. They organised the panel 'Gendered working conditions in governing bodies' (co-sponsored by IPSA RC19 and now published in Parliamentary Affairs) for the 2019 European Conference on Politics and Gender in Amsterdam.

Details of the 2021 workshop on Parliament as a Gendered Workplace can be found on the Events page.