The Grit in the Oyster? Women’s Parliamentary Organizations and the Substantive Representation of Women
| Author | Sarah Childs,Peter Allen |
| Published date | 01 August 2019 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032321718793080 |
| Date | 01 August 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
research-article2018
Article
Political Studies
2019, Vol. 67(3) 618 –638
The Grit in the Oyster?
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/0032321718793080
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Organizations and the
Substantive Representation
of Women
Peter Allen1 and Sarah Childs2
Abstract
This article addresses a foundational question of political representation: how do representatives
act for those they represent? In a shift away from analyses of individual representatives’ attitudes and
behaviour, we identify Women’s Parliamentary Organizations as potential critical sites and critical
actors for women’s substantive representation. Offering one of the most in-depth studies to date,
our illustrative case is the long-standing UK Parliamentary Labour Party’s Women’s Committee.
With a unique data set, and using both quantitative and qualitative methods, we systematically
examine the Parliamentary Labour Party’s Women’s Committee efforts to substantively represent
women over more than a decade. We find that the Committee sustains its focus on a small number
of women’s issues and interacts with party leadership to advance women’s interests in a feminist
direction. Our findings capture processes of political change, a frequently under-explored stage
in studies of substantive representation. We close by identifying the potential for comparative
research in this area.
Keywords
women’s substantive representation, critical mass, critical actors, political change, gender and
politics, feminizing, women’s parliamentary organizations
Accepted: 17 July 2018
Introduction
The simple contention that substantive representation flows from descriptive representa-
tion has underpinned much gender and politics research over the past two decades. Here,
we rethink this classic question by shifting attention away from the behaviour of
1Department of Politics, Languages & International Studies, University of Bath, Bath, UK
2Department of Politics, Birkbeck, University of London, London, UK
Corresponding author:
Peter Allen, Department of Politics, Languages & International Studies, University of Bath, Claverton Down,
Bath BA2 7AY, UK.
Email: p.a.allen@bath.ac.uk
Allen and Childs
619
individual women legislators to analyse Women’s Parliamentary Organizations (WPOs),
an umbrella term for various types of women’s committees, caucuses and more informal
groups (Celis et al., 2016; Piscopo, 2014; Sawer and Turner, 2016). We contend that
WPOs constitute a ‘missing link’ that can bring the relationship between women’s
descriptive and substantive representation into better focus (Harder, 2017).
Key questions relating to substantive representation are revisited via a case study of
the UK Parliamentary Labour Party’s Women’s Committee (WPLP). Specifically, we
systematically identify (1) the actors of women’s substantive representation (which
women legislators are members of, and active in, the WPO), (2) the content of women’s
substantive representation (how the WPLP defines women’s issues and women’s inter-
ests) and crucially (3) the processes by which the group seeks to act for women (how and
upon whom the WPLP seeks to have a re-gendering effect). Leveraging original qualita-
tive and quantitative data we are able to demonstrate the existence of a set of women MPs
who over time constitute the WPLP’s core membership and fortify the Committee’s work,
the WPLP’s ongoing focus on a small number of women’s issues over more than a decade
and the Committee’s capacity to interact directly with and – in their view – hold to account
the Labour party leadership vis-a-vis what the Committee defines as women’s interests.
Our analysis suggests that the WPLP is exemplary of the way in which a self-identified
feminist organization can engender political change, even in a highly constrained mascu-
linized context.1
We begin with a brief review of established theoretical claims linking descriptive and
substantive representation, along with a summary of associated criticisms. We then jus-
tify our turn to parliamentary organizations ‘for’ women, contending that these have nei-
ther in general, nor in the case of the WPLP in particular, been subjected to systematic
empirical analysis in respect of substantive representation, with the exception of Harder’s
(2017) recent study of a Danish committee. Rejecting a categorical distinction between
women’s legislative committees and women’s caucuses, we outline a set of generalizable
research questions through which WPOs can be empirically analysed. Our original and
unique data and mixed-method methodological approach are then outlined before the
presentation of our empirical findings, which are organized to speak of the substantive
representation literature’s ‘agreed’ research framework (Childs and Lovenduski, 2013).
Overall, we claim that it makes most sense to see WPOs as both sites of, and potential
critical actors in, women’s substantive representation within masculinized legislatures.
We close with a reflection on how our approach could be exported to comparative or other
single-country case studies.
Rehearsing Women’s Substantive Representation
In the ‘politics of presence’ literature, a re-gendering of the content of politics is said to
be one likely, albeit not guaranteed, consequence of the changed composition of our
elected institutions (Manbsridge, 1999; Phillips, 1995; Williams, 1998). The standard
account goes like this: women representatives act for women because they are feminist
or at least gender conscious, act in a feminist direction, but do so in institutions that are
largely gender-insensitive (Celis and Childs, 2018). A plethora of global empirical
research finds much that is positive in this purported relationship (see Childs and
Lovenduski, 2013), even as it reveals that processes and outcomes are more complex,
contingent and contested than this optimistic account suggests (Celis et al., 2008;
Weldon, 2014).
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Political Studies 67(3)
In simple terms, critical mass theory contends that substantive representation will
come about as a result of there being a ‘critical mass’ of women in a legislature. Only as
their numbers increase – the pivotal figure usually taken to be 30% (Dahlerup, 1988) –
will women be able to work more effectively together to promote women-friendly policy
change and to influence their male colleagues to accept and approve legislation promot-
ing women’s concerns (Childs and Krook, 2009).
In recent years, this approach has been criticized for a naivety deriving from the con-
cept’s heritage in physics (Childs and Krook, 2009). Unlike science there is no magic in
numbers in politics (Beckwith, 2007). The likelihood of women representatives ‘acting
for women’ and delivering women’s substantive representation is mediated by a myriad
of factors, including their newness, party identity and institutional marginalization (see
Childs and Lovenduski, 2013). The political contexts within which women act, not least
the gendered nature of parliaments, are less passive backdrops and are instead more con-
stitutive of, women’s substantive representation. Critical mass theory also suggests a
theoretically troubling essentialism that assumes women are all the same and stands
accused of privileging a universal and feminist definition of women’s interests (Celis and
Childs, 2012). Nor can it account for acts for women undertaken by male representatives
(Celis et al., 2014), for its claims rest on increases in the numbers and percentages of
women. The preferable concept of critical actors (Childs and Krook, 2009) leaves open
the identity of those who act for women, defining them in terms of what they do rather
than who they are. Male or female, these representatives initiate policy proposals on their
own and often – but not necessarily – embolden others to take steps to promote policies
for women, regardless of the number of female representatives present in a particular
institution (Childs and Krook, 2009: 734). The tendency to focus on the actions of indi-
vidual elected women representatives, albeit at the aggregate level, has also been called
into question. This critique comes from scholarship on women’s movements (Beckwith,
2013; Weldon, 2002), gender mainstreaming and femocrats (McBride and Mazur 2012),
women and executives (Annesley and Gains, 2010; Gains and Lowndes, 2014) and non-
elected actors within processes of representation (Saward, 2010). Based on such studies
the actors of women’s substantive representation are frequently agreed to be multiple and
collective, acting within and outside legislatures, and to be both elected and non-elected.
In this context, contemporary scholars of women’s substantive representation are
guided to answer eight, linked questions: (1) Why should women be represented? (2)
Who are the representatives of women? (3) Which women are represented? (4) Where
does the representation occur? (5) How is the representation done? (6) When does it take
place? (7) To whom are representatives accountable? (8) How effective is the (claimed)
representation? (Childs and Lovenduski, 2013; citing Celis et al., 2008; Dovi, 2007,
2010). This framework informs our analysis as we turn now to consideration of women’s
parliamentary organizations as potential sites of, and actors in, women’s substantive ...
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