When Do Men MPs Claim to Represent Women in Plenary Debates—Time-Series Cross-Sectional Evidence from the German States

Abstract

Extensive scholarly work engages with the growing number of women in legislatures around the world and highlights their role as advocates of women’s interests during parliamentary decision-making processes. This article sheds light on the reactions of men MPs (members of parliament) to this trend by uncovering how women's numerical strength in party parliamentary groups shapes the issues that their men colleagues emphasize when speaking about women during plenary debates. I argue that, the higher the share of women in a party parliamentary group, the more will men representatives emphasize women’s interests in the context of issues they can easily relate to—either because the issues lie in men’s area of responsibility according to ideas about traditional role distributions in the society, for example, the financing of gender equality projects, or because they are part of broader patterns of societal inequality, such as poverty or health. I provide empirical evidence for this argument based on original time-series cross-sectional data from plenary debates in six German states between 2005 and 2021 using a structural topic model. These findings shed light on men’s role as critical actors and have implications for gender equality and the functioning of representative democracy more broadly.

Partisanship, Independence, and the Constitutive Representation of Women in the Canadian Senate

“…As women increase in numbers in their parties, the policy positions of the party begin to shift toward concerns about the welfare state (related to women's socialization into caring roles) (Espírito-Santo, Freire, and Serra-Silva 2020; Kittilson 2011). Moreover, increasing numbers of women in a party or legislature appears to have some effect on men's behaviorwhether it is an increasing overall focus on women's issues (Bratton 2005), a respectful stepping back to allow women to represent their own group (Höhmann 2020), or the development of strategies to represent women in typically "masculine" policy areas (Kroeber 2023). These findings about the importance of women's presence, coupled with the probabilistic nature of women's substantive representation, suggest that restructuring institutions is an important step in enabling the representation of women's interests.…”

Does gendered representation in national legislatures promote substantive representation and human development? Evidence from the developing world

“…This is because there are anticipated effects when legislatures become more gender diverse, as seen in most industrialized democracies. Even absent a critical mass, increasing women's representation in legislatures may allow women legislators to strategically form coalitions with other women in government, or they may alter the legislative behavior of men to be more receptive to women's concerns through demonstration or symbolic effects (Childs & Krook, 2009; Kroeber, 2022). However, this is labeled as “essentializing” the feminist discourse, as it is possible that women legislators do not act homogeneously and that there are other critical actors beyond legislatures that affect policy change (Celis et al, 2008).…”