Do Women Need Women Representatives?

Abstract

This article analyses the relationship between the representatives and the represented by comparing elite and mass attitudes to gender equality and women's representation in Britain. In so doing, the authors take up arguments in the recent theoretical literature on representation that question the value of empirical research of Pitkin's distinction between substantive and descriptive representation. They argue that if men and women have different attitudes at the mass level, which are reproduced amongst political elites, then the numerical under-representation of women may have negative implications for women's substantive representation. The analysis is conducted on the British Election Study (BES) and the British Representation Study (BRS) series.In this article, we elucidate crucial dimensions of feminist theories of representation through an empirical test of whether there is congruence between the political attitudes of women politicians and women citizens. A growing literature on political representation is driven by feminist concerns to assess the representation of women in different political settings. Seeking to understand contemporary political practice, feminist scholars have revisited representation theory to develop an extensive literature which addresses concerns that are not systematically treated in the mainstream political science literature on representation. 1 This feminist scholarship has enhanced our understanding of the nature of representation. 2 * Campbell and Lovenduski: School of Politics and Sociology, Birkbeck College, University of London; and Childs: Department of Politics, University of Bristol (email: r.campbell@bbk.ac.uk). The authors are grateful to Pippa Norris for her continuing support of the British Representation Study and for her advice on its development, to Richard Topf for his help with the British Election Studies Information System (www.besis.org), and to Ron Johnston for his help with providing, and explaining how to use, certain statistical data. We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and editors of the British

Do Women Vote for Women Candidates? Attitudes toward Descriptive Representation and Voting Behavior in the 2010 British Election

“…These items load on to two clear dimensions (Campbell, Childs and Lovenduski 2010). As such rather than simply combining items relating to gender equality in the BES data we create two additive scales.…”

Quotas for Men: Reframing Gender Quotas as a Means of Improving Representation for All

“…Although recent scholarship has sought to disassociate descriptive and substantive representation, arguing that women's bodies are neither a guaranteed nor an exclusive conduit for feminist minds (Celis et al 2008;Childs 2006;Childs and Webb 2012), there is still solid evidence that women do need women representatives (Campbell et al 2010).…”

Does Only Gender Matter? Exploring Spanish MPS’ Perceptions About Descriptive and Substantive Political Representation

“…Dahlerup (1988) trasladó la "teoría de la masa crítica" 3 de Kanter al ámbito de la política en los países escandinavos cuestionando su utilidad y proponiendo sustituir esta teoría por la del "actor crítico" 4 , caracterizado por: 1) la extensión mayoritaria de valores o actitudes feministas entre los parlamentarios mujeres o varones (Tremblay y Pelletier, 2000;Campbell et al, 2010;Celis y Erzeel, 2015); 2) su capacidad para innovar el contenido y/o el estilo de la acción parlamentaria gracias a su antigüedad como representantes (Beckwith y Cowell-Meyers, 2007) o a su poder posicional (Kathlene, 1994); 3) su capacidad de dar forma a coaliciones de mujeres que trasciendan las barreras ideológicas y de partido (Celis y Childs, 2008).…”