Gendering Parliamentary Questions

Bird, Karen

doi:10.1111/j.1467-856x.2005.00196.x

Cited by 76 publications

(45 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…Some authors argue that the key element for achieving women's political effectiveness is the strength of the women's movement (Reynolds, 1999;Naz, 2002;Weldon, 2002;Vijayalakshmi, 2002;Bauer, 2004). Others, without disregarding the importance of this movement, have provided evidence that female legislators, even in adverse circumstances, tend to promote issues related to women and children (Tremblay, 1998;Lovenduski and Norris, 2003;Bird, 2005). The problem with this evidence is that it is mainly limited to high human development countries including Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia and European Nations.…”

Section: Women In National Parliaments and Empowermentmentioning

confidence: 95%

What is missing in measures of Women's Empowerment?

Beteta¹

2006

Journal of Human Development

158

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This paper argues that the Gender Empowerment Measure is an incomplete and biased index on women's empowerment, which measures inequality among the most educated and economically advantaged and fails to include important non-economic dimensions of decision-making power both at the household level and over women's own bodies and sexuality. After addressing in more depth the relevance and limitations of existent and potential indicators on women's empowerment in the political and economic spheres, this paper identifies and assesses potential indicators in those spheres currently absent in the Gender Empowerment Measure (household and individual dimensions). Finally, the paper stresses that empowerment is not primarily an outcome, but a process; as such, there are elements enabling or limiting it, such as — but not limited to — the legal and regulatory framework. Considering this, the construction of a new aggregated measure on the Gender Empowerment Enabling Environment of countries is suggested.Women in politics, Gender indicators, Empowerment, Gender Empowerment Measure, Enabling environment,

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Section: Women In National Parliaments and Empowermentmentioning

confidence: 95%

What is missing in measures of Women's Empowerment?

Beteta¹

2006

Journal of Human Development

158

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“…Since getting information from or influencing the agenda of members of the executive through more informal means is generally more difficult for opposition MPs, they should rely more heavily on parliamentary questions. Next, we control for the MP's gender (1 if female) since, based on previous works (Bird 2005), we expect women MPs to tend to focus more on social policy-related themes (family policy, care for the elderly, health care). Finally, we included a categorical variable to capture the MP's party membership (reference value is PS) as a means of dealing with all the remaining party-related variables.…”

Section: Control Variablesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Parliamentary Questions as an Instrument for Geographic Representation: The Hard Case of Portugal

Borghetto

Santana-Pereira

Freire

2020

Swiss Political Sci Review

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This article asks whether and why, in a system lacking electoral incentives to cultivate personal votes, MPs might choose to signal to geographic constituents. It explores this question by analysing the number of written parliamentary questions submitted to the Portuguese parliament on two issues – unemployment and crime – between 2009 and 2015, and asking if MPs are more inclined to table questions on specific issues when their districts suffer particularly from related problems. The article finds evidence that constituency‐level problem pressure does matter for the signalling activities of MPs, although policy specialization remains the main driver of their issue emphasis. This finding contributes new knowledge to the ongoing debate on the factors accounting for the representative relationship between MPs and constituents, by drawing attention to the importance of district‐level problem pressure as one of the drivers of issue sponsorship in parliament.

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“…Philips (1995: 62) argues that the presence of women will enhance the visibility of 'particular interests of women that would otherwise be overlooked'an argument that has found empirical support in numerous countries (e.g. Bird 2005;Bratton 2005;Chattopadhyay and Duflo 2004;Gerrity et al 2007). Similarly, research on ethnic minority MPs finds them more inclined to champion the interests of ethnic minorities than their ethnic majority colleagues (Donovan 2012;Saalfeld 2011;Saalfeld and Bischof 2013).…”

Section: Descriptive and Substantive Representationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Representing their own? Ethnic minority women in the Dutch Parliament

Mügge

Pas

Wardt

2019

West European Politics

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Ethnic minority women tend to be better represented in parliaments than ethnic minority men. What does this mean for their substantive representation? This article makes use of intersectional analysis to study how the relationship between descriptive and substantive representation differs within and between gender and ethnic groups. Drawing on written parliamentary questions and the committee memberships of MPs in seven parliamentary sessions (1995)(1996)(1997)(1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012) in the Netherlands, a strong link is found between descriptive and substantive representation. Female ethnic minority MPs more often sit on committees and table questions that address ethnic minority women's interests than male ethnic minority and female ethnic majority MPs. The link, however, is fragile as it is based on a small number of active MPs. This demonstrates the importance of an intersectional approach to understanding how representation works in increasingly diverse parliaments, which cannot be captured by focusing on gender or ethnicity alone.The under-representation of women and ethnic minorities in elected office is an almost universal phenomenon. But perhaps counter-intuitively, the combination of these seemingly marginal political identities can become an advantage for ethnic minority women. In the United States, more female than male elected officials have Latino and African-American backgrounds (Hardy-Fanta 2013;Orey and Brown 2014;Smooth 2006). Similarly, women in New Zealand are better represented among ethnic minority MPs, particularly M aori, than among ethnic CONTACT Liza M. M€ ugge

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Gendering Parliamentary Questions

Cited by 76 publications

References 16 publications

What is missing in measures of Women's Empowerment?

What is missing in measures of Women's Empowerment?

Parliamentary Questions as an Instrument for Geographic Representation: The Hard Case of Portugal

Representing their own? Ethnic minority women in the Dutch Parliament

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