Female Members Of Parliament Research Articles

Dynastic Female Politicians and Family Rule in Thailand: Evidence from the 2019 and 2023 General Elections

ABSTRACT Previous research has shown that the majority of Thailand’s female Members of Parliament (MPs) elected in or before 2011 came from political families and constituted one small yet important part of the country’s dynastic democracy. This paper examines whether this pattern continued in the last two general elections of 2019 and 2023. It shows that a sizeable number of female MPs elected in 2019 and 2023 are related, by blood or marriage, to male MPs. While the restoration of electoral politics in 2019 has helped end military authoritarian rule, it has enabled well-connected and well-heeled women from political families to win parliamentary seats. Electoral dynasticism still constitutes a formidable, if not insurmountable, structural barrier to entry into Parliament for female candidates who do not have powerful family connections. Dynastic female MPs contribute, as in the previous decades, to adding a dynastic and patrimonial quality to Thailand’s democracy.

Gender and reactions to speeches in German parliamentary debates

AbstractAre nonverbal reactions during parliamentary debate gendered? Do male and female members of parliament (MPs) experience applause or jeering differently? In short, yes, and the gendered nature of a speech matters. Using an original corpus of over 544,000 speeches given in German state parliaments, we first estimate the gendered nature of parliamentary speeches and then examine how reactions to speeches given by male and female MPs differ. Female and male MPs receive similarly positive and negative reactions to their speeches on average, but they receive different reactions depending on the gendered nature of the speeches. Speeches using language associated with women's topics receive fewer reactions overall and even fewer when delivered by men. The gendered nature of parliamentary interjections could affect how women MPs view their position and how women voters view parliament.

The discursive construction of solidarity by Ghanaian female parliamentarians

Abstract Research on issues of women has largely focused attention on, among others, power asymmetries and gender stereotypes, with less emphasis on positive linguistic mechanisms of women. Drawing on a critical discourse analytical approach and using Ghanaian parliamentary debates as data, this paper examines how female members of parliament (MPs) construct solidarity. The paper finds that, first, Ghanaian female MPs construct solidarity by positioning themselves as agents and the voice of (Ghanaian) women by using the inclusive-we and our/us. Second, the MPs engage in solidarity formation for (Ghanaian) women empowerment by championing the cause of women and calling for female empowerment. Third, the MPs demonstrate solidarity through congratulatory messages that highlight the achievements of (Ghanaian) women. Finally, the MPs resist discourses that discriminate against (Ghanaian) women. This paper highlights the need for marginalized voices to be centred in CDA research and contributes to the burgeoning scholarship on reparative critical practices.

The Gender Gap in Issue Attention and Language Use within a Legislative Setting: An Application to the Italian Parliament (1948–2020)

Abstract We investigate the gender gap in issue attention among members of parliament (MPs) by applying automated text analytic techniques to a novel data set on Italian parliamentary speeches over a remarkably long period (1948–2020). We detect a gendered specialization across issues that tends to disappear as women’s shares in parliamentary groups increase. We then investigate whether women’s access to previously male-owned issues brings with it a different agenda, operationalized as a different vocabulary. We detect a U-shaped pattern: language gender specificity is high when female MPs are tokens in parliamentary groups with a large preponderance of men; it decreases when their shares start increasing and grows again when they constitute a considerable minority. We argue that this pattern is consistent with the theory of tokenism, and it is produced by the interlinkage of commitment to shared norms and the distribution of “activation thresholds” among female MPs.

Female members of parliament, right-wing parties, and the inclusiveness of immigration policy: evidence from 26 European countries

Female members of parliament, right-wing parties, and the inclusiveness of immigration policy: evidence from 26 European countries

Political communication on social media in Latin America: unequal use of Twitter by members of parliament

This article focuses on the under-researched topic of the use of Twitter by members of parliament (MPs) in Latin America. There have not yet been any thorough comparative studies on this topic, and the majority of publications on the region focus on single case studies. Previous studies have primarily concentrated on presidents, or in the case of MPs, on specific case studies. A total of 2,353,138 tweets were accessed via the Twitter API, and 3,215 MPs were examined. Regression models and correlations were used to answer research questions, and the main variables examined concerned individual characteristics of MPs (gender and age) and socioeconomic indicators of the country (number of people on Twitter, internet access, Human Development Index - HDI). As a result, this paper offers a report on how MPs in Latin America are currently utilizing Twitter. While his social network is used by more than 90% of MPs in some countries (Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Peru, and Uruguay), there are countries where fewer than half of MPs use it (Bolivia, Honduras, and Nicaragua). The results show that female MPs are more likely than male MPs to use Twitter. In addition, Twitter is being adopted more by younger MPs. Other results show that country characteristics such as internet penetration, Twitter population, and the HDI are significant predictors regarding the adoption and use of Twitter by MPs. These results are consistent with assumptions based on cost-benefit calculus. Thus, it does not make as much sense for politicians to adopt Twitter in countries where there are less people on Twitter and low internet penetration. In particular, if politicians want to be elected or inform citizens about their activities, they have an opportunity to reach voters through Twitter. However, this is only true if Twitter is used in their countries.

Assessing the role of gender-related aspects in public budgeting debates: A view of the central level in Germany

The paper explores how members of parliament (MPs) address gender-related aspects in the budgeting process at the central level in Germany, a country that pursues gender equality as a global objective but has not implemented gender budgeting (GB) (yet). Nevertheless, from a budgeting perspective the German context is interesting, as parliament has unrestricted powers to amend the budget draft. The study follows approaches in performance management literature streams that have explored different types of performance information use. Building on a qualitative analysis of parliamentary budget debates, our results show that gender-related aspects matter in budgeting even when GB is not implemented. However, resources are less often referenced than programmes and policies in the budget debates. We find that MPs address gender-related aspects in a differentiated way (reflected in four types of performance information use), and that this is affected by user characteristics: the MPs’ gender, their party affiliation, committee membership and in some aspects, their age. While it may not come as a surprise that female MPs act as advocates for gender-related aspects, it is interesting that female MPs are more likely to reference resources when addressing gender-related aspects than male MPs. Further, our analysis of types of performance information use shows that a party's position as either a part of a governing coalition or opposition, as well as party lines across the opposition, affect the way in which gender-related aspects are addressed: exerting supportive use types (i.e., legitimizing, highlighting) and rather challenging use types (i.e., de-legitimizing, deflecting). Points for practitioners Even in a context where gender budgeting is not implemented, members of parliament (MPs) reference gender equality in budget debates. The frequency and the way in which gender-related aspects are referenced mirrors MPs’ stance towards gender equality (rather supportive/rather challenging). Female MPs are more likely than male MPs to draw attention to the allocation of resources for gender-related issues. More female MPs in parliament may strengthen advocacy for gender-related aspects, particularly if budget documents do not contain gender-related performance goals.

Gender differences in stalking, threats and online abuse reported by Victorian politicians

This study sought to estimate the frequency of harassment, threats, assault and stalking faced by Victorian Members of Parliament (MPs), with a focus on gender and experience of online abuse. 46 of 128 MPs completed an online survey (36%). 82% reported experiences of harassment, 85% reported threats of harm, and 35% reported stalking, with most reporting lifestyle changes in response. Female MPs were more likely than males to report all these experiences. Almost 100% of MPs using social media reported online abuse. Abuse about political positions or general defamatory statements were most common (95% and 87% respectively) and were experienced equally by male and female MPs. 50% reported gender-based abuse, with 85% of female MPs reporting such abuse. Results highlight the frequency and impact of abuse and harassment of MPs by the public, and support the need for increased awareness of, and accessibility to, expert advice, threat assessment and interventions.

Gender and Strategic Opposition Behavior: Patterns of Parliamentary Oversight in Belgium

Studies on strategic parliamentary opposition often focus on broader behavioral patterns or party‐level variation. This article analyzes differences at the individual level, more notably between male and female opposition members of parliament. Using rational‐choice perspectives of opposition activity and theories of gendered political behavior, we hypothesize that female opposition members focus less on ideological conflicts (with or between coalition parties) and more on their party’s core issues. Furthermore, we expect them to more frequently target female ministers, in part because of the nature of their respective portfolios. Our analysis of all parliamentary questions tabled by opposition members in the Belgian Federal Parliament between 2007 and 2019 (N = 48,735) suggests that female members of parliament seem more likely to focus on issues that are salient to their party and less on conflictual matters between coalition partners. These results provide new empirical insights into strategic opposition behavior and gendered differences in the legislature.

Introducing the Worldwide Age Representation in Parliaments (WARP) data set

AbstractThe absence of young adults in elected legislative assemblies is a democratic deficit with potentially severe repercussions. Yet, research is rarely able to address the issue of age group representation systematically because we are lacking empirical information on the age distribution in parliaments. The Worldwide Age Representation in Parliaments (WARP) data set remedies this dearth of data. It provides information about the numerical presence of age groups in parliaments, spanning across the globe and over time and includes age data on legislators, such as the share of members of parliament (MPs) aged 30 years or under, 35 years or under, or 40 years or under. The data set also reports measures that compare the presence of legislators aged 30 years or under, aged 35 years or under, aged 40 years or under, aged 41 to 60 years, as well as aged 61 years or over in relation to the same age group in the general population of a given country. Moreover, it includes gendered figures, such as the presence of young female MPs. The WARP data set contains data for more than 700 elections in 149 countries, so far, and is freely available online. It allows for a novel analysis of the age composition of legislatures.

An agnostic approach to gender patterns in parliamentary speech: a question of representation by topic and style

By examining all speech in the 18th legislative period (2013–17) of the German Bundestag, including 6,598,831 words in 51,337 text segments, we compare women’s and men’s parliamentary speech. Our approach builds on the agnostic view on representation and follows a bottom-up approach, which avoids pre-set definitions of what is women’s or men’s language use. By analysing the frequencies of the most used words and keywords from semantic networks, we find four notable descriptive patterns. First, female members of parliament tended to talk more about stereotypical ‘feminine’ policy issues like, for instance, contraception. Second, female members of parliament put people more central in their language, while male members of parliament focused more on Germany as a country. Third, women focused more on procedures than men. Lastly, female members of parliament used a politer language style, for instance, by thanking others, more than male members of parliament.

Party Control, Intraparty Competition, and the Substantive Focus of Women's Parliamentary Questions: Evidence from Belgium

AbstractParliaments are still often criticized for being gendered—that is, for maintaining problematic inequalities between male and female officeholders. While research highlights how female members of parliament (MPs) take the floor less often than men, especially during debates on “hard” policy domains, much remains unknown about the role that political parties play in fostering such differences. Drawing on a novel data set on the use of parliamentary questions in Belgium (N = 180,783), this article examines gendered patterns in the substantive focus of MPs’ parliamentary work. It confirms that differences in the issue concentrations of male and female MPs exist, but they are larger when access to the floor is more restricted and party control is stronger. Our findings yield important insights into the gendered side effects of parliamentary procedure and shed some light on the “choice versus coercion” controversy with regard to women's substantive focus of parliamentary work.

We are not the president’s ‘yes’ men and women: how legislative budget scrutiny improved in Uganda

ABSTRACT This paper seeks to identify the factors that explain how members of parliament improved budget scrutiny using unique empirical data collected in Uganda. Two instances are studied that mark the improvements. First, the 2001 Budget Act that established the Parliamentary Budget Committee with large competencies for African standards. Second, the change in the 2012 Health Budget, a rare instance when parliament made significant budget amendments. The analysis reveals that political entrepreneurs used a window of opportunity to build a coalition for change. The window of opportunity opened at an event organised by civil society. The process that followed improved legislative budget scrutiny in a country with strong executive systems and strong patronage. Two factors have proven influential that are understudied in the current literature, civil society and female members of parliament.

The gender divide in issue attention

AbstractThis article explores the conditions under which female members of parliament (MPs) are more likely than male MPs to participate in political debates relating to a range of issues. Building on descriptive representation theory and parliamentary behaviour studies, we examine how the effect of the number of women in parliament, and women's access to leadership positions, on MPs’ issue attention varies across policy areas and parliamentary venues. Looking at oral questions asked by male and female MPs in plenary sessions and parliamentary committees in Spain from 1982 to 2018, we found that numbers and leadership positions significantly affect female MPs’ attention to those parliamentary activities that aim to highlight the merits of government action and in venues that are less open to public scrutiny. Our results also illustrate that the presence of women in parliament and their access to leadership positions have a significant impact on female MPs’ attention to rights‐ and welfare‐related issues, but not issues traditionally linked to high‐profile political areas such as national security, macroeconomic policy, and government affairs. The presence of women in parliaments has increased globally, but inequalities in the gender distribution of issue attention persist, thereby reducing the capacity of female MPs to act on behalf of and stand up for women in political debates on most issues.

Gender, Power and Privilege in the Parliamentary Workplace

AbstractThis introduction to the Special Section ‘Parliaments as workplaces: gendered approaches to the study of legislatures’ makes the case for revisiting the conditions under which male and female Members of Parliament (MPs) and staff carry out their parliamentary duties, thereby furthering the understanding of parliaments’ inner workings. It shows that adopting a workplace perspective grounded on feminist institutionalist analyses and gender organisational studies opens up new avenues for studying parliaments and the outcomes of political representation. The article then outlines how contributors to this Special Section deal with various aspects of the parliamentary workplace and concludes by highlighting the wider implications of this perspective for examining crucial questions of the parliamentary studies research agenda.

A Chamber of One's Own: Institutional Claim-Making on Gender Equality and the Symbolic Role of Parliaments

AbstractThis article investigates how legislatures may re-present themselves through claim-making on behalf of the institution. Focusing on claims about gender equality, attention is paid to the Women's Parliament organized by the Parliament of Catalonia, an all-women event through which female members of Parliament and social activists came together to put forth a feminist political agenda. Drawing on a constructivist approach, I disentangle the intentions of the institution, examine the discursive construction and performative enactment of the representative claim, and assess its reception by different audiences. I also reflect on how the symbolic activity undertaken within and by parliaments can recast ideas and practices of representation to promote more radical and inclusive politics. Overall, the article evinces that symbolic representation can be studied as a dimension in its own right and that, rather than being a mere by-product, it does co-constitute descriptive and substantive representation.

Status Incongruity and Backlash against Female Legislators: How Legislative Speechmaking Benefits Men, but Harms Women

The literature on nomination procedures and intra-party politics shows that engagement in personalized parliamentary activities helps legislators get re-elected and promoted in the party list. However, as a considerable body of scholarly work suggests, women in leadership positions who are perceived to disconfirm the well-known gender stereotypes by being “too assertive” and “agentic” in the workplace may suffer from what social psychologists call the “backlash effect” (i.e., facing economic and social sanctions). Integrating insights from the literatures on perceptions of female leadership and intra-party politics, we reveal the differential effect of legislative speechmaking on the career prospects of male and female members of parliament (MPs). Specifically, using an original dataset of over thirty-five thousand parliamentary speeches and the biographies of 2,140 MPs who served in the Grand National Assembly of Turkey between 1995 and 2011, we show that the well-documented positive effect of engagement in parliamentary activities on career prospects holds for male MPs, but not for their female counterparts. In fact, we found that female MPs who were active on the legislative floor were significantly less likely to get renominated and promoted in the party rank. These results imply that the challenges facing women in leadership positions go beyond electoral competition.

When Do Female MPs Represent Women’s Interests? Electoral Systems and the Legislative Behavior of Women

Research on women’s political representation has repeatedly shown that female legislators represent women’s interest more strongly than their male colleagues. However, a growing body of literature shows that the parliamentary behavior of female members of parliament (MPs) and the relationship between descriptive and substantive representation of women is affected by a number of institutional variables. This paper contributes to this debate by analyzing the effect of the electoral incentive structure on the substantive representation of women. Drawing on the Competing Principals Theory, it is expected that female legislators more frequently act on behalf of women if their re-election does not depend on the representation of local interests in electoral districts. The empirical analysis uses the German mixed electoral system and analyzes the representation of women’s issues in oral and written parliamentary questions tabled in the German Bundestag between 2005 and 2013. The results of a hurdle regression model show that female MPs are more likely to concentrate on the representation of women’s interests if their re-election is secured and if they do not have to fight for additional local votes from their district.

Między działalnością społeczną a wielką polityką. Maria Moczydłowska (1886–1969), najmłodsza posłanka Sejmu Ustawodawczego II RP

Maria Moczydłowska była najmłodszą spośród wszystkich posłanek Sejmu Ustawodawczego i jedną z trzech wybranych z listy narodowej (poza Gabrielą Balicką i Zofią Sokolnicką). Swój sukces wyborczy w dużej mierze zawdzięczała współpracy z księdzem Wacławem Blizińskim — współtwórcą Narodowego Zjednoczenia Ludowego. W swojej działalności dążyła do ponadpartyjnej współpracy posłanek i aktywnie działała na rzecz równouprawnienia kobiet i mężczyzn. Do historii przeszła m.in. jako pierwsza kobieta, która zabrała głos w polskim Sejmie. Była orędowniczką wprowadzenia całkowitej prohibicji. Po zakończeniu kariery politycznej skoncentrowała się na działalności oświatowej.

The prevalence and impact of online trolling of UK members of parliament

Online trolling is a new phenomenon that is increasingly coming to public attention. Recent events in the United Kingdom (UK) have raised concerns about this behaviour. Trolling is particularly targeted at public figures, and Members of Parliament (MPs) are a prime target. In this study we surveyed UK MPs about their experiences and the impact of being trolled by completing a short online questionnaire. One-hundred and eighty-one MPs responded to our survey. Chi-square tests for independence and one-way ANOVA was employed to analyse the data. All MPs had experienced trolling and many were trolled multiple times a day, and the principle platforms for this abuse were Twitter and Facebook. The pattern of trolling varied between male and female targets, with males reporting more concern about reputational damage, and females more concern about their personal safety. The impact of being trolled varied between males and females, with a much greater impact on female MPs. We discuss the effects of online trolling on the victims of this behaviour.