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IPSA’s flagship journal, the International Political Science Review (IPSR), starts the year with a special issue on Gender and Political Financing. Money is power, and power is very difficult to access without money. Contesting elections is a very costly affair that compels many candidates around the world to have, and/or raise, large sums of money. Most especially, this applies to candidates in countries who must privately fundraise, but even in countries with public financing and strict regulation of election expenses, candidates face time and opportunity costs.

This special issue (January 2023, Volume 44, Number 1) asks the question whether these costs are gendered. Covering seven case studies in six papers, the authors concretely demonstrate that the costs of running for office are not gender neutral. Rather, the first three contributions convincingly show that women face higher prohibitive costs and face more hurdles while fundraising (see articles by Murray; Atmor and Kenig; Feo et al.). The second trio of articles (Buckley and Mariani; Muriaas et al.; Shin and Kwon) enhance our knowledge of the roles of political parties in mitigating financial gender gaps.

5XÉçÇømembers can access the full dating back to 1980 through the My 5XÉçÇømenu. IPSR is published by SAGE and is committed to publishing peer-reviewed material that makes a significant contribution to international political science.