Mapping the Language of Women's Interests: Sex and Party Affiliation in the Bundestag
| Date | 01 June 2013 |
| Author | Christina Xydias |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2012.00970.x |
| Published date | 01 June 2013 |
| Subject Matter | Original Article |
bs_bs_banner
P O L I T I C A L S T U D I E S : 2 0 1 3 VO L 6 1 , 3 1 9 – 3 4 0
doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2012.00970.x
Mapping the Language of Women’s Interests:
Sex and Party Affiliation in the Bundestagpost_970319..340
Christina Xydias
Clarkson University
This study maps the language that legislators use to define women’s interests in the context of contemporary Germany.
Using party groups’ manifestos from the 2005 legislative elections and personal interviews with members of the 16th
Bundestag (2005–9), the study compares female and male legislators within parties and female legislators across parties,
with particular attention to how these interviewees’ language cleaved to and from their party scripts (parties’ positions
on and language regarding women’s interests). The map that emerges from this analysis suggests that legislators’
language in talking about women’s interests is mediated by sex and party affiliation in combination, such that female
and male legislators differ within each party and female legislators differ across parties. The study shows that female
legislators across parties share an emphasis on the inadequacy of formal equality in yielding women’s equality in
practice, but they diverge markedly in the policies that they recommend to address this problem. Much previous
research on women’s representation has focused on the finding that female legislators advocate for women at higher
rates than their male colleagues, underplaying both the significant variation among female legislators as well as the
contributions of conservative female legislators.
Keywords: women’s substantive representation; female legislators; Bundestag
The question of whether female legislators legislate differently from their male coun-
terparts in contexts of low levels of party discipline is no longer under serious debate.
Specifically in terms of advocacy for women and women’s interests, previous literature
has demonstrated compellingly that female legislators are engaged in this advocacy to a
greater degree (measured in various ways) than male legislators (Celis, 2006; Chatto-
padhyay and Duflo, 2004; Childs and Withey, 2004; Reingold, 2000; Swers, 2002;
Thomas, 1994). However, the margin by which women are ‘better’ advocates for women
is often found to be slight, and it is clearly mediated by other factors that shape indi-
vidual legislators’ behavior. The questions that linger concern these mitigating factors,
including party affiliation.
The role of party affiliation in signaling variation in legislators’ definitions of women’s
interests requires closer attention, not only because party is known as a consistent predictor
of legislators’ behavior and preferences. The definition of women’s interests used in
previous work has often closely correlated with left-oriented party platforms, making it
difficult to differentiate the effects of individual legislators’ characteristics from party effects
and therefore to demonstrate how sex and party affiliation might interact. Indeed, both
conservative and feminist women may claim to be legitimate representatives of women, but
they differ in what they talk about as best for women (Celis and Childs, 2012; Piscopo,
2011; Schreiber, 2008; Wiliarty, 2010).
This study focuses, first, on the ways in which party affiliation interacts with sex in
signaling legislators’ definitions of women’s interests. It argues that legislators’ choice of
language is signaled by sex and party affiliation in combination, such that female and male
© 2012 The Author. Political Studies © 2012 Political Studies Association
320
C H R I S T I N A X Y D I A S
legislators differ within each party and female legislators differ across parties.1 In other
words, if we were to map the variety of characterizations of women’s interests held by
members of the Bundestag, the placement on this map would be a function of both sex and
party affiliation. Characterizations of women’s interests would not cluster, or be signaled, by
sex alone, nor would they cluster by party affiliation alone. Instead, these signals inflect one
another. This study further shows that sex may be a more salient signal to characterizations
of women’s interests in some parties than in others, and specifically, more salient in
right-leaning parties.
Previous research on women’s political representation has tended to focus on the finding
that female legislators engage in advocacy for women at higher rates than their male
colleagues, controlling for party affiliation, but this overlooks significant variation in female
legislators’ conceptions of women’s interests, and it lacks a clear account of party affiliation
as signaling distinctions among women. Female legislators may differ from their male
counterparts within any given party, but these intra-party distinctions do not amount to
convergence among women across parties.
This claim is illustrated by a qualitative mapping of the language that parties and
legislators use in defining women’s interests, with particular focus on distinguishing
between women across parties. In order to capture conservative as well as feminist con-
ceptions of women’s interests, the study’s definition of women’s interests is inclusive, intend-
ing to observe the breadth of language that legislators use rather than to record instances
when legislators adhere to or promote a narrow ex ante definition of these interests. This
earlier stage of concept formation is crucial to understanding the dynamics of more
conventional measures of representation such as bill sponsorship and voting patterns
( Broughton and Zetlin, 1996; Lovenduski and Norris, 2003; Tamerius, 1995).
The context for this study is late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century Germany, a
case that affords a wide array of political parties, including distinct party positions on gender
politics and a baseline expectation of party discipline, which makes divergence from the
party meaningful and interesting. An examination of Germany offers insights into the
determinants of diverging attitudes towards women’s interests in a context where many
fundamental milestones for equality – for example suffrage, and divorce laws that recognize
both parents equally – have been reached.2 This context, where much progress has been
made but simultaneously where problems such as unequal pay for equal work persist,
represents much of the advanced industrial democratic world. If more work remains to
enhance women’s rights in the advanced industrial democratic world, as most feminists
argue, then we can learn about the dynamics of contention over this progress from
examining the German case.
The language used to define women’s interests is culled from a combination of party
programs from the 2005 legislative election and 54 personal interviews with members of
the 16th legislative period (2005–9) of the Bundestag. Interviews with members of the
Bundestag do not tap into the concept of women’s substantive representation in the way
that roll-call votes do; instead, they offer detail regarding legislators’ justifications for their
positions, which permits a closer look at explanations for cleavage to and from party
platforms. Although the study cannot establish predictors of frequency, the map that these
materials yield offers important insights into the diversity of language that legislators
© 2012 The Author. Political Studies © 2012 Political Studies Association
POLITICAL STUDIES: 2013, 61(2)
M A P P I N G T H E L A N G UAG E O F WO M E N ’ S I N T E R E S T S
321
employ, and correspondingly into the diversity of conceptions of women’s interests that
inform legislators’ policy and decision making.
This study proceeds in three sections. The first section discusses theoretical expectations
regarding how sex and party affiliation, separately and together, signal attention to women’s
interests. The second section assesses how national-level German political parties charac-
terized women’s interests in their 2005 election platforms, summarizing ‘party scripts’ on
these issues. The third section examines material from personal interviews with members
of the Bundestag, juxtaposing analyses of intra-party variation (the extent to which sex
dominates variation in legislators’ characterization of women’s interests within parties) and
inter-party variation (the extent to which party affiliation dominates variation in female
legislators’ language).
Factors Signaling the Framing of Women’s Interests: Sex and
Party Affiliation
The two signals to the language of women’s interests contrasted in this study are a
legislator’s sex and her or his party affiliation. The first suggests that gendered experiences
facilitate a specific definition of women’s interests, while the second suggests that legislators
will adhere to a party script (for any number of reasons, including but not limited to
legislators’ self-selection into parties, party discipline, etc.). Thus sex and party affiliation are
both expected to signal legislators’ choice of language for defining women’s interests.
Needless to say, there are other factors, but these two highlight particularly salient com-
peting signals that we can study by examining legislators’ responses to questions about
women’s interests.
Sex
As noted earlier, much previous research on women’s substantive representation, that is,
advocacy for women’s interests, has focused on demonstrating that female policy makers
engage in it more than their male colleagues. This focus reflects the...
To continue reading
Request your trial