Gender and Politics: A Descriptive and Comparative Analysis of the Statutes of Brazilian and Portuguese Political Parties
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This article seeks to ascertain the gender inclusiveness of electoral politics Brazil and Portugal through a content analysis of the statutes of political parties. This is a question that is worth examining in terms of its implications for gender equality and social justice. The article is well organized, but some issues need to be considered.
-- This sentence in the Introduction is not clear: who is 'they' in this sentence?
'At the same time, they have higher degrees of education than men (Amâncio and Santos 2021; PNAD C 2019; PORDATA 2022d) and consider it an essential feature of democracy that men and women have the same rights (World Values Survey, 2022).' [lines 46-49]
-- It would be useful to add a paragraph, maybe in the Methods section, about contemporary electoral politics in the two countries. For instance, the current party (ideology) in power in the two countries, and some background on whether this party has always dominated. While this information can also be obtained online, it is useful to see how the authors would seek to present it. This is briefly mentioned in the Results, lines 462-469, but could also be introduced earlier.
-- On line 94, 'district size' is mentioned. It is not clear what this means.
-- It would be useful if the statutes were described in some more detail [lines 143-145, where they are introduced as main data sources]. For instance, who writes them and how are they adopted, are they amended from time to time, does a party necessarily need a statute?
-- Lines 165-168 can be deleted.
-- There are 23 statutes from Brazil and 8 from Portugal [line 176]. This discrepancy needs to be explained. How does this affect the analysis?
-- The five themes drawn from the statutes seem to be repeated too many times in Methods [lines 178-184, lines 185-213, Table 1]. Maybe this could be mentioned in Table and only once in text?
-- In Table 2, it maybe useful to arrange political parties by country, ideology, and then alphabetical order of their name.
-- The Results section could be more clearly written, in terms of its text. Maybe the text could follow the format of the tables, so that findings for political parties are discussed in terms of ideology. For example, left parties in Brazil showed that ... , these political parties are ... Otherwise the listing of political parties becomes confusing for a reader not familiar with politics in Brazil and Portugal.
-- Is the word 'sectorial' or 'sectoral'? [line 165]
-- 'genres' should be 'genders'? [line 374]
-- Shift the last paragraph [lines 481-488] to the beginning of the Conclusion. Maybe after limitations, a short paragraph could be added about the value of conducting a study of this kind?
-- This is not a suggestion, but a comment on how I thought through this study's research design. While the comparison between Brazil and Portugal may not be easy to justify, the authors adequately explain why a comparison between the two countries is being undertaken [lines 30-49]. In qualitative terms, the differences between the two countries may make them less eligible for comparison, except that they are historically linked and hence likely to have some cultural similarities. From my perspective, comparison enables more complex representation by illuminating contextual similarities and differences, thus providing a broader (possibly generalizable) view of gender and electoral politics.
The language of the article needs minor to moderate revisions.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
We would like to thank your thoughtful comments and suggestions and their contribution to improve our article entitled “Gender and politics: A descriptive and comparative analysis of the statutes of Brazilian and Portuguese political parties”.
In the attached document, we provide your comments and suggestions as well as our point-by-point answers.
Thank you for your attention!
Our best regards!
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 2 Report
Please see attached file.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
We would like to thank your thoughtful comments and suggestions and their contribution to improve our article entitled “Gender and politics: A descriptive and comparative analysis of the statutes of Brazilian and Portuguese political parties”.
In the attached document, we provide your comments and suggestions as well as our point-by-point answers.
Thank you for your attention!
Our best regards!
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors have made substantial improvements to their manuscript. They have adequately addressed all of my suggestions regarding wording and phrasing and have made appropriate changes to descriptions of their findings. Although I do not believe that the arguments they provide for using raw numbers (not percents) in the Results section figures justify their decision to do so, I can overlook this concern if other reviewers and editors consider the revised manuscript publishable.
