The Intersection of Gender and Minority Status in National Legislatures: The Minority Women Legislative Index

Hughes, Melanie M.

doi:10.1111/lsq.12025

Cited by 38 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…Some women are, for example, rich and white, while others are poor and black. In response to this problem, Suzanne Dovi argues that preferable descriptive representatives should possess strong mutual relationships with members of disadvantaged subgroups of their social groups, and be judged by ‘who does and does not interact with them’ (Dovi : 736 – also see Hughes ). According to Dovi, mutual relationships with subgroups are important because they help descriptive representatives develop a broader understanding of their group's interests.…”

Section: The Argument For Descriptive Representationmentioning

confidence: 99%

That's what friends are for: how intergroup friendships promote historically disadvantaged groups’ substantive political representation

Kokkonen

Karlsson

2017

British Journal of Sociology

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The interests of historically disadvantaged groups risk being overlooked if they are not present in the decision-making process. However, a mere presence in politics does not guarantee political success. Often groups need allies to promote their interests successfully. We argue that one way to identify such allies is to judge politicians by whether they have friends in historically disadvantaged groups, as intergroup friendships have been shown to make people understand and feel empathy for outgroups. In other words, intergroup friendships may function as an important complement to descriptive representation. We test our argument with a unique survey that asks all elected political representatives in Sweden's 290 municipalities (response rate 79 per cent) about their friendship ties to, and their representation of, five historically disadvantaged groups: women, immigrants, youths, pensioners and blue-collar workers. We find a strong correlation between representatives' friendship ties to these groups and their commitment to represent them. The correlation is especially strong for youths and blue-collar workers, which likely can be explained by the fact that these groups usually lack crucial political resources (such as experience and education). We conclude that friendship ties function as an important complement to descriptive representation for achieving substantive representation.

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Section: The Argument For Descriptive Representationmentioning

confidence: 99%

That's what friends are for: how intergroup friendships promote historically disadvantaged groups’ substantive political representation

Kokkonen

Karlsson

2017

British Journal of Sociology

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“…For intersectionality to be effectively employed, we need to address some methodological difficulties. A recent work by Melanie Hughes () is exemplary in this regard. Hughes advocates for a shift in thinking about demographics and political representation from the idea that gender is distinct from ethnicity to an explicit measurement of its intersection.…”

Section: Political Inequality Is Intersectionalmentioning

confidence: 98%

Political Inequality is International, Interdisciplinary, and Intersectional

Dubrow

2015

Sociology Compass

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Political inequality refers to the unequal inf luence over decisions made by political bodies and the unequal outcomes of those decisions. Political inequality is a subtype of power inequality, visible within the political processes of all kinds of political structures. In modern democracies, political inequality is simultaneously a dimension of democracy and a dimension of stratification. Two key theoretical and empirical questions are How much political inequality is there? and is political inequality rising, falling, or staying the same? The answer to these key questions requires us to specify the kind of political inequalityvoice, response, and their subtypes -and whether we mean equality of political opportunities or of political outcomes. I argue that we need to understand better the form, duration, and magnitude of political inequality within and across nations. We need to study it systematically, continuously, and diligently, and in an inclusive, open-minded way, inclining our ears to the varied contributions of the many academic disciplines. We should begin by studying political inequality as an international phenomenon and as an interdisciplinary enterprise, and from an intersectional approach.How much political inequality is there? Is political inequality rising, falling, or staying the same?How would you answer these questions?When the Occupy Wall Street movement reached its heyday in the autumn of 2011, spreading to cities all over the world, the protestors' rallying cry was "We are the 99 percent." They hoped for political change, among other things, but "99" was mainly understood as a statement about economic inequality. If you want to know how much economic inequality there is in your country, and whether this inequality been rising, falling, or staying the same, you can turn to the terabytes worth of publicly available economic data and grind them through the many inequality equations to derive a multitude of statistics. With decades of innovations in the study of economics and inequality, led by the disciplines of sociology and economics, we can, at least, have a debate over the form, duration, and magnitude of economic inequality and its dynamics over time.Political inequality is a distinct form of inequality but has yet to attract sustained, systematic scholarly attention in the same way as its sibling inequalities. Although political equality is a foundation of modern democracy, we do not know how far from equality we are. Even the news media rarely addresses political inequality (Dubrow 2014). Unlike economic inequality, with political inequality, we are far from setting the terms of the debate.I argue that we need to understand better the form, duration, and magnitude of political inequality within and across nations. We need to study it systematically, continuously, and diligently, and in an inclusive, open-minded way, inclining our ears to the varied contributions of the many academic disciplines. Scholarly focus should turn, in equal measure, to both the concept and the empirical assessm...

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“…Intersectionality's reach in gender scholarship has been broad. In the literatures on gender, policy, and political institutions, in particular, intersectional approaches have been used widely (Collins & Chepp, ; Harnois, ; Kantola & Nousiainen, ) in spite of methodological obstacles to accounting for intersectionality in quantitative research (Dubrow, ; Hughes, ). I will focus my review on how intersectionality has improved the research questions about and understandings of (1) political actors and processes and (2) political institutions.…”

Section: Intersectionality and Politicsmentioning

confidence: 99%