Gender and Representation among Legislative Candidates in Australia

Abstract

Some feminist theory suggests that women have different value priorities compared to men, which should lead to different political perspectives and political behavior among candidates for elected office. By contrast, the theory of responsible party government predicts that there should be few gender-based differences in perspectives and behavior among candidates, due to party discipline. Studies conducted in the United States and elsewhere, however, have consistently shown that legislators are district-oriented, irrespective of party affiliation. In this article, the authors apply multivariate analysis to matched mass-elite survey data collected during the 1987 Australian federal election to analyze the policy views of male and female candidates and to compare them to attitudes among their constituents. For candidates, party dominates political attitudes, with much less influence for constituency opinion and little at all for gender except on the question of advancement for women. These findings are somewhat at variance from similar studies in the United States and Britain.