Ferrín Pereira, MónicaPaleo Mosquera, Natalia2025-10-142025-10-142025-08-12Mónica Ferrín Pereira, Natalia Paleo Mosquera, Pushing for Gender Mainstreaming: Women’s Presence and Alliances at the Local Level in Spain, Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society, 2025;, jxaf037, https://doi.org/10.1093/sp/jxaf0371072-4745https://hdl.handle.net/10347/43074A most important debate in gender representation studies revolves around whether women’s presence in politics correlates with the advancement of gender-equal policies, given the mixed results observed. In this article, the authors aim to contribute both theoretically and empirically to this debate by investigating whether distinct types of women’s presence/alliances have any differential impact on the promotion of gender mainstreaming at the Spanish local level. Our study shows a descriptive representation loop wherein the presence of women seems to attract more women into political positions. Importantly, the presence of women in local politics and the potential for them to form alliances between themselves has the ability to promote gender mainstreaming at the local level, albeit not all types of presence are equally effective. Our findings offer significant insights for reevaluating the connection between women’s political involvement and gender equality.eng© The Author(s) 2025. Published by Oxford University Press. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Attribution 4.0 Internationalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Local gender policiesGender mainstreamingWomen’s presence and alliancesSpainjournal article10.1093/sp/jxaf037open access