Methodological Reflections on Studying Gender‐Sensitive Parliaments Cross‐Nationally: A “Most Significant Change” Approach

Whilst cross‐national comparative analyses provide distinct opportunities for the study of gender‐sensitive parliaments, the inherent challenge in conducting comparisons necessitates a continued search for innovative methods. This article responds to this need by proposing the “most significant change” (MSC) approach (Davies & Dart, 2005), which centres on collecting and analysing “stories of significant change.” Drawing on our own application of MSC in an international study commissioned by INTER PARES, we show that MSC’s bottom‐up, inductive, and participatory approach proved valuable in uncovering hitherto unknown instances of gender‐sensitive changes across countries, illuminating the broader impact of such changes beyond parliaments and incorporating practitioners’ perspectives. The flexibility of MSC also enabled context‐specific applications, which we illustrate through three examples from Cyprus, Germany, and Trinidad & Tobago. By offering a complementary approach to compare parliaments’ gender sensitivity across countries, our study provides a novel perspective for future comparative analyses in the field.