Who Gets What? The Interactive Effect of MPs’ Sex in Committee Assignments in Portugal

Abstract

This article investigates the role of key individual-level factors, namely expertise, seniority and preferences in women’s assignments to legislative committees. It focuses on Portugal and draws on biographical data on MPs in five elections until 2009 and interviews with 20 legislators in 2014. The results show that female and male MPs have a similar probability of being appointed to powerful and economic issue committees, but female MPs are more likely to be appointed to social issue committees regardless of expertise and seniority. Although this outcome might be the product of their own preferences, it is influenced by embedded gender norms.

The Determinants of Committee Membership in Belgium and the Netherlands

“…Lastly, the analysis tested an effect of gender on being assigned to low-saliency committees, as was shown by several studies from diverse settings (Chiru, 2019;Espírito-Santo & Sanches, 2020;Goodwin et al, 2020). Such patterns are not visible in the results of the two analysed parliaments.…”

“…MPs' expertise in a committee's jurisdiction was linked to assignments in many institutional contexts (Chiru, 2019;Giannetti, Pedrazzani & Pinto, 2019;Mickler, 2018aMickler, , 2019. Female MPs were shown to be overrepresented in committees that deal with 'feminised' or low-status policy areas (Baekgaard & Kjaer, 2012;Chiru, 2019;Espírito-Santo & Sanches, 2020;Goodwin, Holden Bates & McKay, 2020;Murray & Sénac, 2018;Pansardi & Vercesi, 2017), although there is an ongoing debate on whether this is the result of self-selection or discrimination. Additionally, the 'structuring' hand of the PPG leadership was demonstrated in some studies (Giannetti et al, 2019).…”

Low-cost policy specialisation, district characteristics and gender. Patterns of committee assignment in Romania

“…many committees working in parallel on multiple issues) and the policies enacted follow the preferences of the legislature because the assignment process ensures committees are microcosms of the chamber (Gilligan and Krehbiel 1990). Indeed, the assignment of members to committees where they can specialise at low-cost due to their previous education or professional career is a pattern that was shown to hold in several European parliamentary democracies, under very different party systems and legislative organization rules (Mickler 2018a, Mickler 2018b, Espírito-Santo & Sanches 2019. The very limited parliamentary expertise that parties can mobilise in young democracies coupled with the relatively high rates of legislative turnover they experience, should make policy specialization based on the expertise acquired previously by the MPs a very attractive option for the party leadership.…”

When Do Men MPs Claim to Represent Women in Plenary Debates—Time-Series Cross-Sectional Evidence from the German States

“…This association follows from traditional ideas about the distribution of labor between men and women, with feminine policy areas including, for example, child care, elderly care, or education, and masculine policy areas including, for example, budget, internal and external security, or economy (Escobar-Lemmon and Taylor-Robinson, 2009, Krook and O’Brien, 2012). Even nowadays, women are more likely to be interested and to be perceived as competent actors in “feminine” policy areas (see, e.g., Goddard, 2019, Espírito-Santo and Sanches, 2019, Goodwin et al, 2021). To the extent that women’s substantive representation entails engaging with issues clearly in their gender’s traditional area of responsibility (e.g., family), men might perceive it as inappropriate to speak for women if large numbers of women are present.…”