When Do Women Speak? A Comparative Analysis of the Role of Gender in Legislative Debates
| Published date | 01 August 2019 |
| Author | Marc Debus,Hanna Bäck |
| Date | 01 August 2019 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032321718789358 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321718789358
Political Studies
2019, Vol. 67(3) 576 –596
© The Author(s) 2018
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/0032321718789358
journals.sagepub.com/home/psx
When Do Women Speak?
A Comparative Analysis of
the Role of Gender in
Legislative Debates
Hanna Bäck1 and Marc Debus2
Abstract
Do female representatives participate less often in legislative debates, and does it matter which
topic is debated? Drawing on the role incongruity theory, we hypothesise that women take
the parliamentary floor less often because of the gender stereotypes that are likely to guide
the behaviour of party representatives. Such underrepresentation is less likely to be present
when debates are dealing with policy areas that can be characterised as feminine. By referring
to critical mass theory, we expect women to participate less in debates if they are members
of parties with fewer female representatives. The results of an analysis of speechmaking among
members of parliament in seven European countries show that female members of parliament
are less represented in legislative debates, especially when debates deal with topics that can be
characterised as masculine. Furthermore, the effect of gender on speechmaking clearly varies
across parties. However, the pattern does not follow the logic derived from critical mass theory.
Instead, female members of parliament take the floor less often when they are members of parties
with many female representatives.
Keywords
parliamentary behaviour, representation, gender
Accepted: 27 June 2018
Introduction
Demographic characteristics of citizens and politicians are key independent features
when explaining their behaviour and decision-making in the political process, and the
role of gender in political leadership and decision-making has been analysed by scholars
in several different fields. For example, scholars have long expected that female
politicians will better represent the interests of women (see, e.g. Phillips, 1995; Pitkin,
1Department of Political Science, University of Lund, Lund, Sweden
2 School of Social Sciences and Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES), University of
Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany
Corresponding author:
Marc Debus, University of Mannheim, A5, 6, 68131 Mannheim, Germany.
Email: marc.debus@uni-mannheim.de
789358PCX0010.1177/0032321718789358Political StudiesBäck and Debus
research-article2018
Article
Bäck and Debus 577
1967). How well women are represented in the parliament has also been expected to
influence policy outcomes in fields such as welfare, health and education policy, with
some studies finding that there is a clear link between female representation and substan-
tive outcomes (e.g. Schwindt-Bayer and Mishler, 2005). In international relations, many
scholars expect that female leadership matters for foreign policy outcomes, and a recent
empirical study shows that women’s legislative representation matters for a country’s
level of defence spending and conflict behaviour (Koch and Fulton, 2011).
We here connect specifically to the literature that highlights the role of personal
characteristics of elected politicians for explaining their behaviour in parliament or
government (e.g. Burden, 2007; Saalfeld, 2011). Although much research on individual
characteristics of legislators or of cabinet members has focused on presidential sys-
tems, recent research shows that personal characteristics like gender or religious
denomination matter also for the legislative behaviour of members of parliament (MPs)
in parliamentary democracies (e.g. Bäck et al., 2014; Baumann et al., 2015; see Taylor-
Robinson, 2014 for an overview of studies of gender and legislatures). However, these
recent studies mostly focus on the parliament of one single country so that a compara-
tive analysis is still missing.
We aim at filling this research gap by providing a comparative analysis of the effects
of MPs’ gender on their legislative activity. More specifically, we ask if female repre-
sentatives participate less in legislative debates and if the topic debated in parliament
matters for their participation. There are several reasons for why we should be interested
in the impact of gender on legislative debate behaviour. As suggested by several scholars,
legislative debate plays a central role in parliamentary democracies, since bills are typi-
cally debated by MPs before they vote on them (see, e.g. Bäck and Debus, 2016; Proksch
and Slapin, 2014). This means that legislative debates may influence the policy-making
process in a significant manner – in particular in debates on ethical or moral issues, where
the party leadership does not always dictate the party line, some MPs may simply be
convinced by the arguments advanced by fellow MPs and decide to vote in a specific
manner in the light of legislative debate. Previous research shows that speeches are used
by legislators to influence policy (see, e.g. Maltzman and Sigelman, 1996). Legislative
debates may also be seen as forums for ‘public communication which parties and their
MPs exploit for electoral purposes’ (Proksch and Slapin, 2014: 1). Hence, if debates have
an impact on policy-making, or if debates are used by parties to inform or influence the
media and the voters, it is important to know if gender matters. For example, if women
are highly underrepresented in debates, policy output may become biased against wom-
en’s interests. Even when debates do not have a significant impact on policy outputs,
gendered speech patterns may lead to a lower legitimacy for the democratic system.
Previous research on US state legislatures shows that women speak less frequently in
debates (Kathlene, 1994), which is also in line with previous work on the Swedish Riksdag
(Bäck et al., 2014). However, case studies on, for example, Australia (Broughton and
Palmieri, 1999), France (Murray, 2010) and Uganda (Wang, 2014) show that ‘women are
equally active debate participants as their male colleagues’ (Taylor-Robinson, 2014: 254).
Taken together, these findings suggest that there is a cross-country variation in the role of
gender in debates, but so far, few comparative studies exist.
We contribute to the previous literature by presenting a comparative study of gender
and legislative speechmaking that includes several European countries as well as by eval-
uating important psychological theories about gender and political leadership. Drawing
on role incongruity theory (Eagly and Karau, 2002), we hypothesise that women take the
To continue reading
Request your trial