Testing the Politics of Presence: Women’s Representation in the Swedish Riksdag

Abstract

This article focuses on women's representation in the Swedish Riksdag. The theory of the politics of presence serves as a point of departure. The aim is to underpin empirically^or to test empirically^the assertion that female politicians, to a greater extent than male politicians, represent the interests of women. The concept of women's interests divides, on a theoretical level, into three components: the recognition of women as a social category; acknowledgement of the unequal balance of power between the sexes; and the occurrence of policies to increase the autonomy of female citizens. On the empirical level this corresponds to measurements indicating female versus male MPs' attitudes and behaviour in areas such as gender equality and social welfare policy. The data used are parliamentary survey studies from 1985, 1988, and 1994. The analysis controls for e¡ects of politicians' gender when other factors^e.g. party a¤liation, age, education, and parliamentary experience^are taken into account. The main result is that the theory of the politics of presence gains strong empirical support. What this study contributes is a signi¢cant measure of stability for the feminist critique of more established theories of representative democracy.

Where Are the Women? An Analysis of Gender Mainstreaming in Introductory Political Science Textbooks

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Women in Charge: Politics in a Women Majority Local Council in Australia

“…They will vary, but we might identify some. They are often CJLG December 2011 -Jul 2012 55 assumed to include issues of maternity, child care, safety, women's access to employment and pay on equal terms -so that women are not punished for parenthood and remain autonomous (Lister 1995;Phillips 1995Phillips , 1998Wängnerud 2000). Here research shows that many female parliamentarians feel an obligation to represent women (Carroll 2002;Reingold 2000;Skjeie 1998), and that women representatives act on behalf of other women, by helping women into political positions, promoting feminist values, addressing problems and aspirations connected to women's lives and intervening on behalf of women (Celis 2006(Celis , 2008Molyneux 1985;Skjeie 1998;Thomas and Welch 2001).…”

Gender differences in environmental concern among Swedish citizens and politicians

“…Ergas and York (2012, p. 10) hypothesise that since women generally are more concerned about the environment than men, 'it is entirely possible that women make different decisions than do men when placed in positions of power'. This implies that women in elected office are also more pro-environmental than their male counterparts in similar positions, a claim that has been echoed in discussion of women's political interests (Tremblay 1998, Reingold 2000, Wangnerud 2000. However, the few empirical studies that have investigated this claim offer inconsistent support for it (McAllister and Studlar 1992, Esaiasson and Holmberg 1996, Jones 1997, Jensen 2000, Stokes 2005, Papavero 2010, Fredriksson and Wang 2011, Fielding et al 2012.…”