Men's Perspective: Change in the Legislative Behaviour of Male Representatives as a Consequence of Women’s Increased Presence in Parliaments

The proportion of women in parliaments across the globe has increased in the last decades. Extensive research examines the newly elected female representatives and indicates that they change the parliamentary agenda by promoting women’s interest in policy areas such as health, family, or gender equality policies. Comparably little is known about the reactions of male office-holders to the changing gender composition of legislatures.

The objective of this project is to close this research gap and focus on the group of representatives who still occupy the majority of legislative seats. Based on the “politics of presence” argument (Phillips 1998) one might argue that male legislators learn about women’s interests as more female legislators enter parliaments and, eventually, begin to promote these issues themselves.

This and similar hypotheses will be put under scrutiny during the project based on empirical evidence from the sixteen German states from between 1990 and today. Focusing on one country ensures a comparable political setting in particular with regard to the tools representatives have at hand to promote women’s interests. At the same time, the sample constitutes a microcosm of Western developed democracies with considerable variation in the numbers of elected women, but also other variables of interest such as the electoral system or post-materialist and feminist values in the society.

During the project, we will gather extensive data covering three indicators for women’s substantive representation (i.e. to what extent individual members of parliament represent the interests of women). The data set will be among the most comprehensive in the field given the number of parliaments, the time horizon and the diversity of the indicators for substantive representation.

The resulting analyses will, first of all, provide new and innovative insights into the relationship between gender and legislative behaviour. Furthermore, the findings might provide much needed explanations for the growing empirical evidence that increasing presence of women in parliaments is not correlated with a more accurate reflection of women’s preferences by political parties, parliaments, and in legislation.