Gender and Party Discipline: Evidence from Africa’s Emerging Party Systems

Abstract

Are men and women legislators equally loyal to their parties? We theorize that parties select candidates based on gendered criteria, leading to the (s)election of more disciplined women. Moreover, we argue that gendered expectations about proper behavior limit women legislators’ ability to act independently from their parties. Using surveys from over 800 parliamentarians across 17 African legislatures, we find that women report significantly higher levels of party discipline than do their men copartisans. From this survey data and new legislative speech data, we also find support for our proposed causal mechanisms. Further, we find that among women parliamentarians, party discipline is negatively correlated with the prioritization of womens rights. A qualitative case study of the Namibian Parliament illustrates our findings. We discuss the implications of our results for women’s legislative effectiveness, for the substantive representation of women’s interests in policy making, and for the continued democratization of emerging party systems.

The effect of women's parliamentary participation on renewable energy policy outcomes

“…Not only do many women enter legislatures in which policy priorities and values have already been defined (Clayton et al., 2019) by socio‐political gendered norms, but women may be incentivized to ‘adapt to [these] norms that have already coalesced around men's priorities to appear as more serious or capable politicians’ (Clayton et al., 2019, p. 77), reducing their own potential impact on policy. Although women's presence in parties influences party positions (Greene & O'Brien, 2016; Keith & Verge, 2018; Kittilson, 2011) because women have fewer avenues through which to enter politics, Clayton and Zetterberg (2021) show that women in strong party systems ‘have less latitude to depart from the party line’ (1) and are thus constrained, to a greater extent than their male counterparts, in their ability to influence issues outside of their party's platform. Thus, women's impact on the policy will likely not materialize immediately; rather, the process may be time‐intensive as they navigate these various institutional constraints.…”

Whose bread I eat, their song I sing? How the gender of MPs influences the use of oversight mechanisms in government and opposition

“…From an academic perspective, such clear gendered patterns are astonishing, since legislative oversight is a highly institutionalised activity, with party dynamics almost deciding about MPs' actions. Previous research has already highlighted how the way MPs fulfil their representative (e.g., Celis, 2006;Höhmann, 2020) and party (e.g., Coffé, 2017;Clayton and Zetterberg, 2021) tasks is gendered. By adding the oversight tasks to this list, this article clarifies that all dimensions of legislative action are shaped by the sex of the actors involved.…”

“…research uncovering additional barriers for women's equal participation in parliamentary decision-making, e.g., in the form of higher levels of party discipline (see e.g., Cowley and Childs, 2003;Thames and Rybalko, 2010;Clayton and Zetterberg, 2021). Deviation from the behaviour of men, which is perceived as the norm in politics (Childs, 2004;Galea and Gaweda, 2018), could decrease women's chances to be selected to more influential political posts by party leaders.…”

“…According to role congruity theory, observers perceive all behaviour that deviates from these expectations as inappropriate and punish it (Eagly and Karau, 2002;Heilman and Okimoto, 2007;Rudman et al, 2012). This process was recently reaffirmed in the context of party discipline, where Clayton and Zetterberg (2021) showed that women display higher levels of party discipline to meet expectations about their gender's appropriate behaviour in politics. 2 The authors argue that women tend to be associated with qualities that are more conductive to obeying rather than confronting party leadership, which incentivises them to follow the party line more strictly than men.…”

How Autocrats Weaponize Women's Rights

“…In many autocracies, women legislators have so far tended to be more loyal to their respective parties than men are. 10 Women are often more dependent on party hierarchies and leaderships because women have limited access to other pathways to politics, such as local clientelist networks. 11 In an…”