The legislature as a gendered workplace: Exploring members of parliament’s experiences of working in the Swedish parliament
| Author | Josefina Erikson,Cecilia Josefsson |
| Published date | 01 March 2019 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0192512117735952 |
| Date | 01 March 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0192512117735952
International Political Science Review
2019, Vol. 40(2) 197 –214
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/0192512117735952
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The legislature as a gendered
workplace: Exploring members
of parliament’s experiences of
working in the Swedish parliament
Josefina Erikson
Uppsala University, Sweden
Cecilia Josefsson
Uppsala University, Sweden
Abstract
Do men and women legislators have equal opportunities to carry out their parliamentary duties? An
important first step to uncover the parliament’s inner life is to evaluate members of parliament’s (MPs)
experiences of their work environment. In this article, we explore the Swedish parliament where women
have held over 40% of the seats for two decades to test the persistence of gendered norms and practices.
Using a new survey dataset of 279 Swedish MPs (82% response rate), we find that female MPs experience
greater pressure, higher levels of anxiety, and are subject to more negative treatment than male MPs. Yet,
while men and women report participating in debates and influencing their political party’s agenda to the
same degree, we conclude that the Parliament’s working environment remains gendered in that women pay
a higher personal cost for their political engagement.
Keywords
Swedish parliament, gender, work place, legislators, members of parliament, experiences, representation,
legislature, treatment, influence
Introduction
Gender equal representation is not only about the proportion of men and women legislators or the
outcomes of politics. Of utmost importance is also that men and women have equal opportunities
to carry out their parliamentary duties. In recent decades a large body of research has examined
political representation from a gender perspective. Research has addressed the problem of
Corresponding author:
Josefina Erikson, Department of Government, Uppsala University, Box 514, Uppsala 751 20, Sweden.
Email: josefina.erikson@statsvet.uu.se
735952IPS0010.1177/0192512117735952International Political Science ReviewErikson and Josefsson
research-article2018
Article
198 International Political Science Review 40(2)
women’s numerical underrepresentation in legislatures worldwide (e.g., Bjarnegård, 2013; Norris
and Lovenduski, 1995) as well as examined whether women in politics make a difference by
changing political outcomes (e.g., Bratton and Ray, 2002; Swers, 2002; Thomas, 1991).
We approach gender and political representation from a workplace perspective, which has
been less frequently utilized than other approaches. This means that rather than analyzing
descriptive or substantive representation as it is usually construed, we ask whether male and
female MPs enjoy equal opportunities to carry out their parliamentary duties. In seeking to
answer this question, we argue that it is imperative to take the parliamentary working environ-
ment into consideration—including not only formal regulations and procedures, but also infor-
mal practices, norms, and expectations. Insofar as informal aspects are difficult to capture
empirically we will assess how women legislators experience their legislative role. Previous
research has revealed that political organizations, including legislative bodies, are often charac-
terized by a culture of traditional masculinity, or institutional sexism, that empowers male legis-
lators while placing female legislators at a disadvantage (Kenney, 1996; Lovenduski, 2005).
That is to say that although formal rules and regulations no longer discriminate against women,
power hierarchies, informal norms, practices, and expectations may still be gendered, thereby
privileging men and masculine behavior.
We maintain that evaluating how legislators themselves experience their work environment
constitutes an important first step in the effort to uncover informal aspects of a legislative body’s
inner workings. In this article, we evaluate how MPs experience: (a) their legislative role; and (b)
how other MPs treat them. We maintain that if such experiences are gendered, and if men and
women have different experiences that disadvantage one or the other group, then working condi-
tions are not fully gender equal. This can have a negative influence on the actual performance of
female (or male) legislators, including possibilities to affect political outcomes.
Here, we turn to the Swedish parliament, in which women have held more than 40% of the seats
for over two decades, in order to evaluate the persistence of gendered norms and practices that
could make male dominance possible while hindering women in their work as legislators. Using
original survey data with Swedish MPs collected in 2016, we examine legislators’ experiences of
the legislative work environment and how they relate to male and female legislators’ performance.
The survey data, as far as we are aware, is unique of its kind, and revolve around themes such as
MPs’ self-perceived power and influence, personal treatment as well as perceived pressure and
expectations. 287 of the 349 Swedish legislators responded to the survey, representing a response
rate of over 82%.
Our findings show that female legislators experience more pressure in their role as legislators and
display more anxiety than their male colleagues. Women are also victims of negative treatment in
the parliament to a higher degree than men. Rather surprisingly, however, there appears to be little
connection between these issues and the performance of the legislators in respect of their self-
reported debate participation and self-perceived possibilities to influence the agenda. We conclude
that even though women legislators appear to be as influential as their male colleagues, gendered
obstacles in the work environment make women pay a higher price for their political engagement.
On an empirical level, the study provides new knowledge concerning the inner workings of the
Swedish parliament, which has previously not been studied in-depth even though it serves as a
prominent role model in respect to women’s political representation. The findings presented also
further our understanding of gendered legislative bodies insofar as Sweden represents a unique
case by enjoying more than two decades of gender-equal representation. On the theoretical level,
the study provides new insights concerning the issue of gender and representation by revealing the
importance of legislators’ experiences in evaluating gendered working conditions in legislative
bodies.
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