Gender And Representation Notes

POLITICAL SOCIOLOGY

GENDER AND REPRESENTATION

‘Since men and women’s political attitudes and behaviour do not differ in any significant way, the under-representation of women in legislatures is irrelevant.’ Do you agree?

Introduction

Different priorities/voting patterns/political behaviour

Social Structures

Partisan relationships

Ideological

The System - open to women?

Conclusion

The Public Consequences of Private Inequality – APSR 91: Burns, Nancy et al

- Studies whether women, if unequal at home, can be equal politically. Men are politically empowered by household financial control.

- Time pressures upon women, namely dual employment and family roles, limit their ability to engage in political activity.

- The resources that facilitate political activity, including education, income, and civic skills, operate similarly across genders, but women have fewer of them¹.

- The study found that, on average, men and women had the same amount of free time – 6 hours per day – irrespective of patterns of employment and household chores.

- Unexpectedly, women who contribute a higher proportion of household income, and exercise control over how it is spent, do not exhibit significantly higher participation rates. However, those who command relatively high respect do engage more. Men are seemingly unaffected politically by household dynamics².

- The biggest drivers of women’s political participation are education, income, and political interest, followed by domestic structures.

- Control over resources matters for men; belief in equality matters for women.

Are Labour women MPs ‘acting for’ women? Parliamentary Affairs 55: S. Childs

- The British general election of 1997 saw 101 women elected as Labour MPs; 65 were elected for the first time in this selection. Their behaviour since the election has been constantly scrutinised. They have voted disproportionately with the government, and have been depicted as blindly loyal. One particular issue, the vote on the cut in lone parent allowance in autumn 1997, which disproportionately affected women, saw only one of the 65 new female MPs rebel. This, Childs argues, represents what is generally considered to be the moment that they failed to act for women.

- Yet, voting behaviour is only one way of examining whether female representatives act for woman; another approach is to ask those representatives, as Reingold suggests, whether basic to represent women substantively or not. Half of female Labour MPs felt that their very presence in Parliament enabled the articulation of women’s concerns, whilst one 3^rd felt that their presence in the constituency helped facilitate access by women constituents and the articulation of a feminised agenda.

- Nearly 2/3 of the female MPs interviewed argued that Labour women MPs articulated women’s concerns; they specified violence against women, opportunities for woman, child care, caring, breast cancer and emergency contraception.

- Some MPs made a direct link between their presence and the responsiveness of the government regarding women’s concerns; one argued that if it was not for the large numbers of women, then the childcare strategy would not have had the funding it was eventually given. Furthermore, another MP argued that without those 101 women MPs, the imperative to act upon women’s issues simply would not have been there. Another argued that it was the culmination of years of female activism within the Labour Party.

- Interviews with the 7 Labour female MPs who served on select committees provide a number of illustrative examples. Of the 2 MPs who had been on the education committee, one emphasised how the male members of the committee had regarded the investigation into school meals and early years education with suspicion, and the other emphasised the importance of a strong labour woman’s presence on the Select committee. This was due to the fact that the female perspective would now no longer be seen as left field, but as mainstream.

- Previous research had established that nearly one 3^rd of the interviewed new intake of Labour female MPs felt that women constituents access them in greater numbers because they shared gender identity. Childs assesses this, and argues the extent to which the perceived change has been maintained. There are 2 main dimensions to increased constituency access for women: individual access for female constituents and increased access for women’s organisations.

• Over half the MPs considered that women constituents access them in greater numbers than their male predecessors, particularly through constituency surgeries.

• Similarly, a colleague felt that it was because she was both a woman and a Labour MP that there was a greater propensity of women and women’s organisations to access her. In addition, 5 MPs considered that it reflected women’s greater propensity to be responsible for the concerns that require MPs assistants and because women are at the centre of the family and of disadvantaged communities.

- Yet, Childs argues that this data is problematic, as it fails to record how male Labour MPs act for women; whilst the female MPs interviewed argue that they are often worse than women, this is perhaps anecdotal.

- Childs concludes that, whilst they have not always been successful, the 1997 intake of female MPs have sought to act for women. However, rejecting the critical mass thesis (which focuses purely upon the number of female MPs), and considering the safe spaces thesis (which argues that there must be space in which feminised analysis may be freely articulated), we can see that both party and gender identities are important element of the substantive representation of women by women. There is a link between women’s descriptive and substantive representation³.

Do Women Need Women Representatives? BGPS 40: Campbell, Childs, and Lovenduski

- Pitkin describes substantive representation as acting in the interests of the represented in a manner that is responsive to them, whilst...

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