Women in Legislative Committees in Arab Parliaments

Abstract

Extant studies have predominantly focused on women’s numerical presence in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA)’s legislatures, yet, research examining the role played by female politicians continues to be limited. To bridge this gap, we study one of the most important, albeit overlooked, bodies within these assemblies: legislative committees. Using an original dataset on committee memberships (n=4580), our data show that females are significantly marginalized from influential committees and tend to be sidelined to social issues and women’s committees. To explain this, we develop a theory of provisional gender stereotyping. We argue that the duration of quota implementation shapes women’s access to influential committees. We focus on two mechanisms to support our argument: a redistribution of power dynamics within legislative bodies and women’s political expertise.

From Thin to Thick Representation: How a Female President Shapes Female Parliamentary Behavior

“…Research on women and legislative politics has virtually exploded in the last few decades. Whereas most of the early literature studied the role of women in local and national legislatures in advanced democracies (e.g., Dolan and Ford 1997;Lawless 2015;Lovenduski 2005;Thomas 1994), newer research has increasingly focused on the prospects for increased equality in political representation in less established democracies in regions such as Southeast Asia (Liu 2018), Sub-Saharan Africa (Bauer and Britton 2006;Tripp 2015), the Middle East (Shalaby and Elimam 2020), and Latin America (Schwindt-Bayer 2010). Most research on women in legislative politics falls into two broader categories: women's descriptive or substantive representation (Wängnerud 2009).…”

“…For instance, several studies of parliamentary cultures in cases as diverse as the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Namibia have attested to frequent harassment and discrimination against women From Thin to Thick Representation: How a Female President Shapes Female Parliamentary Behavior (Bauer 2006;Erikson and Josefsson 2019;Lovenduski 2005). Others have focused on women MPs' slow career advancement and their absence in cabinets and high-prestige committees (Heath, Schwindt-Bayer, and Taylor-Robinson 2005;Krook and O'Brien 2012;Reynolds 1999;Shalaby and Elimam 2020).…”

“…A female president may affect not only the frequency with which women MPs speak but also the topics on which women parliamentarians access leadership. Earlier research has shown that female MPs tend to be particularly marginalized on issues that have traditionally been perceived as "masculine" or "hard" and have been foregone for appointments to cabinet and committees relating to such topics (e.g., Krook and O'Brien 2012;Reynolds 1999;Shalaby and Elimam 2020). Similarly, Bäck, Debus, and Müller (2014) show that women in the Swedish parliament are more likely to speak on issues that the authors characterize as "soft," and less likely to speak on those issues that can be considered "hard.…”

Gender quotas in the Arab world ‐ 20 years on

“…They don't know how to deal with legislation, budgets, and questions to government” 14. In their study of five Arab parliaments, Shalaby and Elimam (2020) find that a higher proportion of women in parliament is positively associated with membership on social issues committees but negatively associated with technical and foreign affairs committees. At the individual level, however, the authors show that the longer the quota has been in place, the more likely women are to gain access to influential committees and committees typically dominated by men, such as technical and foreign affairs committees.…”

Group Gender Composition and Perceptions of Legitimacy

“…Legislative assemblies in authoritarian regimes are often sites of co-optation, information-signaling, and contestation over policy outcomes (Gandhi and Lust-Okar 2009;Schuler and Malesky 2014). Autocratic legislatures may have more limited powers than those in more democratic settings, but MPs still study, discuss, and approve or reject legislation (Shalaby and Elimam 2020). 3 Thus, we propose the following pre-registered hypotheses: H1: Citizens will be less likely to agree that the committee made the right decision when the committee is gender balanced (i.e., substantive legitimacy).…”