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BEYOND THE USUAL SUSPECTS: THE ROLE OF NON-LEFT, MALE AND NON-
FEMINIST MP’S IN THE SUBSTANTIVE REPRESENTATION OF WOMEN.
Karen Celis (University College Ghent - University of Ghent), [email protected]
Silvia Erzeel (Free University of Brussels), [email protected]
Paper for presentation at the ECPR General Conference, Reykjavik 25-27 August 2011
***Work in progress. Please don’t quote without the authors’ permission***
2
Abstract
A focus on female representatives in leftwing parties and a concern for feminist issues in
traditional studies of women’s substantive representation have supported an overall conclusion
that women, feminists and leftwing parties are fervent promoters of women’s interests in
parliament. In this article, however, we want to bring less obvious actors to the fore, more
precisely non-left, male and non-feminist MPs. These actors, however, will not be uncovered
when using the same old research concepts. We therefore test the added value of a new
‘inductive’ approach, studying ‘critical actors’ in women’s substantive representation. In order
to do so, we make use of the 2008-2010 PARTIREP study.
3
1. Introduction
A leading question in the research on gender and politics is whether women in politics make a
difference, and, more precisely, to what extent women MPs substantively represent women and
further the feminist political agenda of the women’s movement1. Given the strive it took in many
countries to undo the numerical underrepresentation of women, this question is a logical one.
Once women entered the representative assemblies in greater number –often due to quotas,
awareness raising campaigns and actions by the women’s movement- an evident question
became whether ‘it was worth the effort’. Gender and politics scholars focused on questions like:
‘Does the presence of female representatives make a difference? and ‘Do women MPs serve
feminist causes and open up the political agenda to include women’s views and issues?’ The
focus on female representatives, historically predominant in leftist parties, and the concern for
feminist issues gave rise to a rather solid overall view that women, feminists and leftist parties
are fervent supporters of women’s substantive representation in parliament.
Consequently, much less is known about the activities of rightwing parties in favor of women.
What is their share in the representation of women’s interests? A first evident reason for our lack
of knowledge about the activities of these unusual suspects might be that there are none –or too
few- to study. The individualism and traditionalism of rightwing ideologies indeed rejects a
societal analysis in terms of groups and favors but a limited government role in economic, social
and welfare matters2. Hence, rightwing ideology is contradictory to group representation and
consequently also to the substantive representation of women as a specific group. This reason is,
however, contradicted by the few studies that have investigated the activities of rightwing parties
in the substantive representation of women. These studies do observe some activity in favor of
1 For overviews of this literature see Sarah Childs & Mona Lena Krook, ‘Critical Mass Theory and
Women’s Political Representation’, Political Studies, 56, 3, 2008, pp.725-736 and Karen Celis, ‘Studying
Women’s Substantive Representation in Legislatures: When Representative Acts, Contexts and Women’s
Interests Become Important’, Representation. Journal of Representative Democracy, 44, 2, 2008a, pp.111-
23. 2 Brian Girvin (ed.), The transformation of contemporary conservatism, London, Sage, 1988; Cheryl Ann
Hyde, ‘Feminist Social Movement Organizations Survive the New Right’, in Marx Ferree and Patricia
Yancey Martin (eds) Feminist Organizations. Harvest of the New Women’s Movement, Philadelphia,
Temple University Press, 1995, pp.306-22.
4
women3. As a result, we attach more importance to a second reason, namely that the research
designs used in previous studies have unintentionally ignored the substantive representation of
women by rightwing parties. First, leftwing ideology, female MPs and feminist attitudes got
strongly intertwined in previous studies. Since the number of women has grown at a faster pace
in leftwing compared to rightwing parties4 and Socialist parties have often hosted the majority of
female MPs5, the focus on female MPs strengthened the focus on leftist parties
6. Second, even
when non-left women are included in the research, what is seen as acting in the interest of
women is foremost defined by leftist feminist standards and in that respect sustains the
connection between left ideologies and acting for women. In order to be recognized as women’s
representatives, they should ‘act like’ their left colleagues7.
Our main problem with this approach lies not in a lack of interest in the accomplishments of
women and feminist MPs, quite on the contrary. But, by focusing only on the ‘most promising
actors’ –i.e. women, feminists and left MPs and parties– we will not obtain a realistic idea of
how the substantive representation of women in parliament actually takes place8. The latter
requires an open and inductive approach to who acts for women, regarding to which issues and
interests, and why they do so.
The aim of this contribution is not to answer all these questions in depth but to test the basic
assumption made in previous research: that, in order to study women’s substantive representation
in parliament, we should only take into account the activities of women, feminists and leftist
3 Rosie Campbell, Sarah Childs and Joni Lovenduski, ‘Equality Guarantees and the Conservative party’,
Political Quarterly, 77, 1, pp.18-27; Karen Celis, ‘In het belang van vrouwen. Vertegenwoordigers (m/v)
en de constructie van de vertegenwoordigde (v)’, Res Publica, 46, 4, 2004, pp.486-511; Michele L.
Swers, The difference women make: the policy impact of women in Congress. Chicago, University of
Chicago Press, 2002; Katherine A.R. Opello, ‘Do Women Represent Women in France? The Case of
Brittany’s Regional Council’, French Politics, 6, 4, 2008, pp.321-41. 4 Wilma Rule, ‘Electoral Systems, Contextual Factors, and Women's Opportunity for Election to
Parliament in Twenty-Three Democracies’, Western Political Quarterly, 40, 3, 1987, pp.477-98. 5 Miki Caul, ‘Women’s Representation in Parliament: The Role of Political Parties’, Party Politics, 5, 1,
1999, pp.79-98. 6 Sarah Childs, ‘In Their Own Words: New Labour Women and the Substantive Representation of
Women’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 3, 2, 2001, pp.173-90. 7 Karen Celis, ‘Studying Women’s Substantive Representation’; Karen Celis and Sarah Childs ‘The
Substantive Representation of Women: What to do with Conservative’s Claims?’ Political Studies,
forthcoming, 2011. 8 Karen Celis et al., ‘Rethinking Women’s Substantive Representation’, Representation. Journal of
Representative Democracy, 44, 2, 2008b, pp.99-110.
5
parties. In order to establish a view of who promotes women’s issues, we apply the concept of
the ‘critical actor’ in the substantive representation of women9 and investigate who fits the
criteria of this concept. Our analysis indeed shows that the group of self-reported critical actors
in the substantive representation of women is mostly composed of women, leftwing MPs and
feminists. But it also features an important number of rightwing MPs, men and non-feminists.
This conclusion should urge gender and politics scholars to take these ‘unusual’ actors in the
substantive representation into account when studying the political representation of women.
Although we adopt an inductive approach to the actors of women’s substantive representation,
our analysis is nevertheless limited to what stays an important arena for political decision-
making: parliaments. We make use of new cross-national data on the attitudes and behavior of
members of parliament from the 2008-2010 PARTIREP survey. This survey was designed to
study the substantive representation of women in a uniform and comparative manner. Our study
includes MPs of national and a selection of regional parliaments in Belgium, Germany, Hungary,
Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Switzerland and United Kingdom.
In what follows, we first present a concise overview of the literature on left-right ideology and
women’s substantive representation. Next, we elaborate on the concept of critical actors and the
methodological consequences of the inductive approach to the study of women’s substantive
representation. Then, we consider the ideological affiliation and individual left-right positioning
of the critical actors. In the last part, we try to determine the characteristics of critical actors in
terms of their sex, feminist attitudes and activism. The conclusion reflects on the quality of our
findings and the consequences more broadly for the study of the substantive representation of
women.
2. Left, right and women’s substantive representation
The substantive representation of women has been strongly linked to leftwing parties and
ideology. We see several reasons for this entanglement. Firstly, scholars have found a strong
9 Sarah Childs and Mona Lena Krook, ‘Analysing Women’s Substantive Representation: From Critical
Mass to Critical Actors.’ Government and Opposition, 44, 2, 2009, pp.125-45.
6
macro level correlation between left oriented political systems and women’s substantive
representation10
. Especially when left parties are in power, legislation of importance to women is
produced and supported11
, demands of the women’s movement are translated into policy12
, and
women policy agencies operate more actively and effectively13
. In addition, research on the
micro level shows that women members of leftist parties often have liberal and progressive
attitudes compared to conservative or rightwing women, resulting in the introduction of more
bills in the interest of women14
. However, much depends on how women’s interests are defined.
As mentioned above, often leftist women’s issues were selected to investigate whether female
representatives act for them. Unsurprisingly, this has brought left (women) MPs to the fore in
these studies15
.
Next to being more active promoters of women’s interests, leftwing parties are believed to have a
‘better’ understanding of what women want. The importance left ideologies attach to equality is
expected to result in opposing gender inequality16
and in the inclusion of traditionally
marginalized and powerless groups in politics and policy17
. Leftwing parties are also
traditionally connected with progressive women’s movements, a partnership based on the
egalitarian character of leftwing ideology18
. In addition, they are considered ‘women friendly’
because they are more inclined to recruit and select female candidates19
, leading to higher
10
Joni Lovenduski and Pippa Norris, Gender and Party Politics, London, Sage, 1993. 11
Karen Beckwith and Kimberly Cowell-Meyers, ‘Sheer Numbers: Critical Representation Thresholds
and Women’s Political Representation’, Perspectives on Politics, 5, 3, 2007, pp.553-65. 12
Joni Lovenduski et al (eds) State Feminism and Political Representation. Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press, 2005; Dorothy E. McBride Stetson (ed.) Abortion Politics, Women’s Movements, and
the Democratic State. A Comparative Study of State Feminism, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2001. 13
Ibidem. 14
Michele L. Swers, The difference women make; Lena Wangnerud, ‘Testing the Politics of Presence
Empirically. Women’s Representation in the Swedish Riksdag’, Scandinavian Political Studies, 23, 1,
2000, pp.67-91. 15
see Karen Celis, ‘Studying Women’s Substantive Representation’ 16
Miki Caul, ‘Women’s Representation in Parliament’; Maurice Duverger, The Political Role of Women,
Paris, United Nations Economic and Social Council, 1955. 17
Richard E. Matland and Donley T. Studlar, ‘The contagion of women candidates in single member and
multi-member districts’, Journal of Politics, 58, 3, 1996, pp.707–33. 18
Karen Beckwith, ‘Beyond compare? Women’s movements in comparative perspective’, European
Journal of Political Research, 37, 4, 2000, pp.431-68. 19
Maurice Duverger, The Political Role of Women, Wilma Rule, ‘Electoral Systems’
7
percentages of female MPs in socialist/left parliamentary fractions20
and a growth at a faster pace
in left compared to rightwing/conservative political parties21
.
Research nevertheless also shows that some women members of centre, conservative or
rightwing parties are ‘pro women’22
. Efforts to increase the number of female representatives
have been made by most parties, including non-left ones23
. In addition, women’s sections within
rightwing parties are active in the substantive representation of women24
. Their actions as well as
electoral strategies incite centre and rightwing parties to act for women25
, be it that they make
rather traditional or even ‘anti-feminist’ claims26
. Sometimes pressures from strong women’s
movements27
or the presence of a strong leftwing making claims about women28
incite rightwing
parties to take a stance on women’s issues.
Furthermore, research calls attention to the fact that distinctions between ‘rightwing’ parties
should be made. Klatch29
and in the same line Schreiber30
, distinguish between laissez-faire
conservative women and social conservative women, and claim that more activity can be
expected from the latter group because gender relations are central to their ideological beliefs.
Laissez-faire conservatives are less concerned with gender relations given that their focus is on
the economy, and especially on downsizing government control in the economic sphere. But
20
Miki Caul, ‘Women’s Representation in Parliament’ 21
Rosie Campbell, Sarah Childs and Joni Lovenduski, ‘Equality Guarantees’; Wilma Rule, ‘Electoral
Systems’. 22
Rosie Campbell, Sarah Childs and Joni Lovenduski, ‘Equality Guarantees’ 23
Miki Caul, ‘Women’s Representation in Parliament’; Richard E. Matland and Donley T. Studlar, ‘The
contagion of women candidates’; Petra Meier, ‘The contagion effect of national gender quota on similar
party measures in the Belgian electoral process’, Party Politics, 10, 3, 2004, pp.583-600. 24
Joni Lovenduski et al. (eds) State Feminism and Political Representation 25
Michele L. Swers, The difference women make 26
Karen Celis, ‘In het belang van vrouwen’ 27
Cheryl N. Collier, ‘How Party Matters: A comparative assessment of the openness of left- and
rightwing governments to women’s issues in Ontario and British Columbia 1980-2002’, Paper for the
Annual Meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association, Saskatoon, 2007. 28
Antonia M. Ruiz Jiminez, ‘Conservative parties and feminist demands viewed in an international
perspective: making sense of the Partido Popular in Spain’, Working paper, Madrid, 2003. 29
Rebecca E. Klatch, ‘The New Right and its women’, Society, 25, 3, 1987, pp.30-8. 30
Ronnee Schreiber, Righting Feminism: Conservative Women & American Politics, New York, Oxford
University Press, 2008.
8
social conservative women are primarily involved with promoting traditional gender roles in
order to endorse their (non-feminist) claims.
Moreover, feminism and conservatism as such are not mutually exclusive31
, and some scholars
identify MPs with feminist attitudes in conservative parties32
. Nevertheless, conservative
women’s organizations often vehemently reject the ‘feminist label’33
. Feminists and feminism
are traditionally connected with progressive women’s movements that stress the egalitarian
character of the left ideology and with leftwing parties34
. The activities of conservative women in
favor of women stem from their gender consciousness. This gender consciousness serves, much
in the same way as feminist attitudes, as a link between gender identity and political action35
.
Although they are not making ‘feminist’ claims, some conservative women do aim at ‘bringing a
women’s perspective to policy issues’36
. Offen37
however does label some rightwing or
conservative views on women’s roles as a feminism, namely a ‘relational feminism’, that stresses
the specificity of women together with equal worth of women and men, and the complementarily
and partnership between the sexes. The ‘individualist feminism’ that is more closely connected
with leftist ideologies, on the other hand, strives for individual rights and equality and equal
treatment between women and men.
3. The concept of the critical actor
As mentioned before, recent studies of women’s substantive representation call for an inclusion
of plural actors, sites, motivations and issues38
. Regarding the actors, Childs and Krook39
contend that scholars need to question who the ‘critical actors’ are in women’s substantive
representation. Critical actors are ‘legislators who initiate policy proposals on their own and/or
31
Angela D. Dillard, ‘Adventures in conservative feminism’, Society, 42, 3, 2005, pp.25-7. 32
Cheryl N. Collier, ‘How Party Matters’; Michele L. Swers, The difference women make. 33
Ronnee Schreiber, ‘Injecting a Woman’s Voice: Conservative Women’s Organizations, Gender
Consciousness, and the Expression of Women’s Policy Preferences’, Sex Roles, 47, 7/8, 2002, pp.331-42. 34
Karen Beckwith, ‘Beyond compare?’ 35
Ronnee Schreiber, ‘Injecting a Woman’s Voice’; Ronnee Schreiber, Righting Feminism 36
Ronnee Schreiber, ‘Injecting a Woman’s Voice’, p.331 37
Karen Offen, European Feminisms 1700-1950: A Political History, Stanford, Stanford University Press,
2000. 38
e.g. Karen Celis et al., ‘Rethinking Women’s Substantive Representation’ 39
Sarah Childs and Mona Lena Krook, ‘Analysing Women’s Substantive Representation’
9
embolden others to take steps to promote policies for women, regardless of the number of female
representatives. (…) Their common feature is their relatively low threshold for political action
(…)’40
. Possibly other representatives hold similar attitudes, but critical actors are more strongly
motivated to actually initiate women-friendly policy reforms, be it alone or in collaboration with
others. The critical actor is not per se female or feminist. The concept enables a shift of focus
from a predefined set of representatives when investigating women’s substantive representation
to a broad group of MPs that represent women (or claim to do so), possibly including men as
well as women and MPs with different ideological profiles.
Critical actors feature specific attitudes and behavior with regard to the representation of women.
They are attitudinally strongly motivated to promote women’s interests in parliament and they
are highly active in representing women’s issues. Based on both criteria we identified critical
actors in the national and a selection of regional parliaments in Belgium, Germany, Hungary,
Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Switzerland and United Kingdom (see
appendix 1 and 2 for a full list of regional parliaments and response rates in the various
parliaments). Together, these countries and parliaments represent a variety of political systems in
terms of electoral rules, parliamentary organization, geographical areas, multi-level governance
and party organization. In order to identify the group of critical actors we combined the
responses on four questions of the 2008-2010 PARTIREP survey. With regard to the attitudinal
component, a respondent had to tick one of the last three boxes on a seven scale answer
indicating the importance that (s)he attached to representing the views and interests of women
(Q.1a in appendix 3). In order to control for socially desirable answers, we only retain the
answers of MPs who in addition indicate that they find it important to represent a group in
society (Q.1b in appendix 3). Regarding the behavioral component of critical actors, a
respondent had to indicate that at least every three months (s)he signals a situation that is
disadvantageous for women in society during the Parliamentary party group meetings (Q.2a in
appendix 3) OR that (s)he at least every three months made a proposal during the Parliamentary
party group meetings to solve problems that women face in society (Q.2b in appendix 3). Critical
actors were in addition dummy-coded. Representatives who meet the criteria regarding the two
components were coded 1, representatives who did not meet these criteria, or meet only one,
40
Ibid., p.138
10
were given code 0. Following Childs and Krook’s definition, whether or not the attempt to
represent women is successful is not of importance. Since we focus on the first phase of the
decision-making process, notably the first political discussion in the parliamentary party group
(PPG), we also include possibly unsuccessful attempts to represent women.
Our analysis is based on self reported data, and we fully acknowledge the limitations of this
methodology of data-gathering. First of all, we should be cautious of the fact that MPs may be
tempted to overstate their accomplishments in survey research. Secondly, at no point have we
verified whether the answers of the MPs correspond to their actual behavior. Most importantly, if
the respondents report that they signal a situation that is ‘disadvantageous’ for women in society,
we accept that claim to be true and accept the (not defined) content given to what is
disadvantageous for women by the respondents to be substantive representation of women.
Hence, we did not apply criteria to distinguish between feminist, non-feminist or anti-feminist
claims for women. Our type of analysis – i.e. mapping who claims to act for women – needs to
be seen as the first and necessary research phase preceding any analysis and assessment of the
different types of claims in the substantive representation of women (e.g. left versus rightwing
claims)41
. We will return to this issue in the conclusion.
4. Critical actors in women’s substantive representation: left or right?
Overall, 19 per cent of the representatives in our study (1) attach importance to the representation
of women’s views and interests (the motivational/attitudinal component) and (2) speak or act in
the interest of women on a regular basis (the behavioral component). They can be identified as
critical actors in the substantive representation of women. Nevertheless, as table 1 shows, there
are important cross-national differences. The number of critical actors in Germany is particularly
high: more than one fourth of the MPs in the German Bundestag meet our criteria. The overall
number of critical actors is the lowest in Hungary and the United Kingdom: only 12 per cent of
the MPs constitute ‘critical actors’. The cross-national comparison also presents some rather
surprising results. The number of critical actors is, compared to other countries, relatively high in
41
See also Karen Celis and Sarah Childs, ‘The Substantive Representation of Women: What to do with
Conservative’s Claims?’
11
Poland, while it is rather low in Norway and the Netherlands. A division of labor in parliament
or in the PPG might account for these differences, since such a division of labor would put the
substantive representation of women in the hands of a small number of ‘gender experts’.
Table 1: Number of critical actors, by country
Number of MPs Number of critical
actors
% of critical actors
Belgium 133 26 19.5%
Germany 114 33 28.9%
Hungary 89 11 12.4%
Ireland 32 5 15.6%
Netherlands 43 6 14.0%
Norway 42 6 14.3%
Poland 42 8 19.0%
Portugal 85 19 22.4%
Switzerland 111 23 20.7%
United
Kingdom
80 10 12.5%
Total 771 147 19.1%
Note: The percentages are row percentages.
In table 2, the various political parties are grouped together and classified according to party
family: Green or Ecologist parties, Socialist or Social Democratic parties, Christian Democratic
parties, Liberal parties, Ethnic or Regionalist parties, Conservative parties, Far Right parties and
‘other’ parties (including the Agrarian, Communist, Single issue and Religious parties). These
eight party families are more or less comparable in all the countries.
12
Table 2: Number of critical actors, by party family
Number of MPs Number of
critical actors
% of party
family
% of critical
actors
Green parties 47 22 47% 17%
Socialist parties 248 57 23% 45%
Chr.-Democratic
parties
105 13 12% 10%
Liberal parties 105 10 10% 8%
Regionalist parties 21 5 24% 4%
Conservative
parties
117 14 12% 11%
Far Right parties 24 2 8% 2%
Other
Religious parties
Communist parties
20 4
3
1
20% 3%
Total 687 127 19% 100%
Note: Differences in terms of party ideology are significant and strong (p<0.000; Cramer’s
V=0.247)
As mentioned before, scholars of women’s substantive representation have reported thoroughly
on the behavior displayed by leftwing representatives in favor of women, assuming –while at the
same time proving– that leftwing parties are more likely to act in favor of women. The results in
table 2 (per cent of party family) point in that direction. Green and Socialist parties present a
higher number of critical actors among their members than Christian-Democratic, Liberal,
Conservative and Far Right parties. However, rightwing parties like Liberal, Conservative,
Christian-Democratic and Far Right parties also feature 8 to 12 per cent critical actors amongst
their MPs, and the Regionalist parties even 24 per cent. This first rough count confirms that the
substantive representation is also done by non-left parties and that critical actors in these parties
constitute an important minority. Furthermore, it highlights that by weighing the behavior of
rightwing MPs against the behavior of leftwing MPs, differences in the levels of women’s
13
substantive representation that exist between parties at the same side of the ideological spectrum
are overlooked.
Another oft-made claim is that (critical) actors in the substantive representation of women
foremost belong to Socialist parties. Our findings (per cent of critical actors in table 2) indicate
that, indeed, most critical actors in our study (45 per cent) are members of Socialist or Social-
Democratic parties. However, Socialist and Social-Democratic MPs do not make up the majority
of critical actors. Important numbers of critical actors were to be found in Green parties (17 per
cent), but also in rightwing Conservative (11 per cent) and Christian-Democratic parties (10 per
cent). Regionalist parties, Liberal parties and Far Right parties bring a less significant
contribution to the number of critical actors. Nevertheless, these results point out that every party
family includes at least some critical actors.
A cross-country comparison of these results confirms that critical actors are often members of
the Green and Socialist/Social Democratic parties. Particularly in Germany, Norway, Portugal
and Switzerland, we witness a strong participation of these two party families in women’s
substantive representation. However, the results in other countries point out that by studying only
Socialist MPs, we would render a fairly partial image of the substantive representation of women
in parliament. In Belgium, Christian-Democratic and Liberal MPs participate almost equally to
leftwing parties in critical acting. In Hungary and Poland, the number of critical actors from
Christian-Democratic or Conservative parties equals the number of critical actors from Socialist
parties. A significant contribution to women’s substantive representation can also be found
among Regionalist and Conservative MPs in the United Kingdom. In Ireland, the results are even
more remarkable: Labour does not provide any critical actor, while half of the group of critical
actors is made up of Liberal MPs.
If MPs belonging to non-left parties are active in the substantive representation of women, are
they part of what they see as the left branch of their party? In this section we consider individual
ideological differences that exist among members of the same party in order to refine the
analysis of the ideological profile of the MPs. We consider the self-placement of individual
members on an attitudinal left-right scale, with the value of ‘0’ corresponding to a left position
14
and the value of ‘10’ corresponding to a right position (Q.5 in appendix 3). Then, we relate the
individual positions of MPs to where they place their own party, in order to see whether MPs
situate themselves in the ‘left’ branch of their party. We admit that concepts such as ‘left’ and
‘right’ may have different meanings in different countries, particularly when comparing Western
European and Eastern European countries. However, individual positions on the attitudinal left-
right scales are in our analyses considered in relation to the party’s position. In addition, left-
right scores are never directly compared on an inter-country level. In that way, they are to a
certain extent acceptable as good indicators of MPs ideological positions.
Table 3: Number of critical actors, by individual ideology
Non-left branch Left branch Total
Green parties 13 (59%) 9 (41%) 22
Socialist parties 39 (68%) 18 (32%) 57
Chr.-Democratic parties 10 (77%) 3 (23%) 13
Liberal parties 6 (60%) 4 (40%) 10
Regionalist parties 1 (20%) 4 (80%) 5
Conservative parties 10 (71%) 4 (29%) 14
Far Right parties 0 (0%) 1 (100%) 1
Other 4 (100%) 0 (0%) 4
Total 83 (66%) 43 (34%) 126
Note: The percentages refer to the proportion of representatives within the group of critical
actors in every party family. Differences are significant for Socialist parties and Regionalist
parties (p<0.05).
The results in table 3 clearly demonstrate that in every party family, except for the Regionalists,
only a minority of critical actors positions themselves in the ‘left branch’ of their parties. This
indicates not only that the representatives of women are part of rightwing parties, but also that
the substantive representation by Christian-Democratic, Liberal and Conservative MPs is rooted
in rightwing ideologies.
15
5. Critical actors in women’s substantive representation: female and feminist?
We now turn to testing the assumption that women and feminists are more likely to participate in
women’s substantive representation. First, we consider, in table 4, the composition of the group
of critical actors by sex. Scholars have often argued that female representatives are more likely
than male representatives to make women’s interests present because the former are able to call
upon their life experience and their position in society ‘as a woman’42
. The results in table 4
indicate that the composition of the group of critical actors in leftwing parties –Green parties and
Socialist parties– confirms this hypothesis: the majority of critical actors consists of female
representatives. Especially in Green parties, female critical actors largely outnumber male
critical actors. In Socialist parties, and also in Christian-Democratic parties, most critical actors
are women, but the difference is slim. Male critical actors make up an important minority group
in both cases (44 and 46 per cent respectively). Moreover, in Liberal and Conservative parties
the majority of critical actors comprises of male MPs.
Table 4: Number of critical actors, by sex of the representative
Men Women Total
Green parties 3 (14%) 19 (86%) 22
Socialist parties 25 (44%) 32 (56%) 57
Chr.-Democratic parties 6 (46%) 7 (54%) 13
Liberal parties 6 (60%) 4 (40%) 10
Regionalist parties 0 (0%) 5 (100%) 5
Conservative parties 9 (64%) 5 (36%) 14
Far Right parties 1 (50%) 1 (50%) 2
Other 3 (75%) 1 (25%) 4
Total 53 (42%) 74 (58%) 127
Note: The percentages refer to the proportion of men/women representatives within the group of
critical actors in every party family. Sex differences are significant for Socialist parties
(p<0.000) and Green, Christian Democratic and Regionalist parties (p<0.01).
42
Anne Phillips, The politics of presence.
16
Table 4 clearly illustrates that solely focusing on the activities of female representatives when
studying women’s substantive representation will result in an incomplete picture. And this is
even more so the case when scholars study the activities of rightwing parties. Considering the
strength of the association between sex and critical acting within each party family, we see that
this association is very strong in Green parties (Cramer’s V=0.404) and remains strong in
Socialist and Christian Democratic parties (Cramer’s V=0.231 and Cramer’s V=0.265
respectively). However, it is rather weak in Liberal parties (Cramer’s V=0.132) and Conservative
parties (Cramer’s V=0.171). The weaker association between sex and critical acting in these
latter cases furthermore indicates that sex will have less power when explaining who operates as
critical actors in rightwing parties than it does in leftwing parties.
Are critical actors mainly feminists? Several scholars contend that it is the combination of
attitudes –in terms of a feminist or gender awareness– and resources –in terms of having a strong
connection with the women’s movement– that forms the basis for substantive representation43
.
Measures of feminist awareness generally distinguish between different layers or dimensions44
.
Feminists are first of all conscious about the fact that women experience inequalities to men and
they firmly reject these inequalities. Secondly, feminists do not only observe inequalities, but are
driven and committed to ending them. Thirdly, feminists recognize the need for solutions that
improve the status of women as a group45
.
In order to measure the feminist consciousness of the MPs in our study, respondents were asked
to indicate on a five-point scale to what extent they agree with the following four items (Q.3 in
appendix): (1) On the whole, women and men enjoy real equality today, (2) Government should
ensure that women and men have equal opportunities; (3) Affirmative action is a legitimate
43
Sarah Childs, ‘The Complicated Relationship between Sex, Gender and the Substantive Representation
of Women’, European Journal of Women’s Studies, 13, 1, 2006, pp.7-21; Suzanne Dovi, ‘Preferable
descriptive representatives: will just any woman, black, or Latino do?’, The American Political Science
Review, 96, 4, 2002, pp.729-43. 44
Pamela J. Conover and Virginia Sapiro, ‘Feminist Consciousness, and War’, American Journal of
Political Science, 37, 4, 1993, pp.1079-1099; Patricia Gurin, ‘Women’s Gender Consciousness’, Public
Opinion Quarterly, 49, 2, 1985, pp.143-163; Manon Tremblay and Réjean Pelletier, ‘More Feminists or
More Women? Descriptive and Substantive Representations of Women in the 1997 Canadian Federal
Elections’, International Political Science Review, 21, 4, 2000, pp.381-405. 45
Ibidem.
17
measure to address the under-representation of women in politics; (4) Women’s organizations
are no longer necessary today. Item one refers to the ‘power discontent’ dimension whereas item
two measures the commitment to change. Items three and four give group solutions for
overcoming inequalities between men and women. Based on the answers of the respondents on
these four items, we created a five-point ‘feminist consciousness’ scale (Principal Component
with Varimax rotation; Cronbach’s α = 0.747). We recoded the five-point feminist consciousness
scale into three categories: MPs with a low feminist consciousness (score 1 to 2.9), MPs with a
moderate feminist consciousness (score 3 to 3.9) and MPs with a high feminist consciousness
(score 4 to 5).
Table 5: Number of critical actors, by feminist awareness of the representative
Low Moderate High Total
Green parties 1 (5%) 1 (5%) 19 (91%) 21
Socialist parties 0 (0%) 8 (15%) 47 (86%) 55
Chr.-Democratic parties 0 (0%) 5 (42%) 7 (58%) 12
Liberal parties 1 (10%) 6 (60%) 3 (14%) 10
Regionalist parties 0 (0%) 2 (40%) 3 (60%) 5
Conservative parties 2 (15%) 8 (62%) 3 (23%) 13
Far Right parties 1 (100%) 0 (0%) / 1
Other 0 (0%) 3 (100%) 0 (0%) 3
Total 5 (4%) 33 (28%) 82 (68%) 120
Note: The percentages refer to the proportion of representatives within the group of critical
actors in every party family. Differences are only significant for Socialist parties (p<0.000) and
Christian Democratic parties (p<0.01).
Table 5 presents the associations between representatives’ feminist awareness and their
participation in critical acting within every party family. As expected, we witness that members
who have low levels of feminist awareness are not very likely to be critical actors. Within every
party family, critical actors who do not have at least a moderate feminist consciousness remain
absent. However, we do observe some differences between leftwing parties on the one hand and
centre or rightwing parties on the other hand. Whereas a striking majority of critical actors in
18
Green and Socialist parties are highly feminist, the group of critical actors in centre or rightwing
parties contains both moderate and highly feminist MPs. Not entirely unexpected, Liberal and
Conservative ideologies seem more difficult to relate to feminist attitudes than Christian
Democratic ideologies. In the former two party families, the majority of critical actors (60 per
cent in Liberal and 62 per cent in Conservative parties) are only moderately feminist.
Next to having feminist attitudes, representatives may also display levels of feminist activism,
for instance by maintaining frequent contacts with the women’s movement. We asked MPs to
indicate how often they are in contact with women’s organizations in their country (Q.4 in
appendix): at least once week, at least once a month, at least every three months, at least once a
year or (almost) never. Because our goal is to differentiate between MPs who maintain frequent
contacts and those who don’t maintain frequent contacts, we dummy-coded the original variable.
MPs who have frequent contacts –i.e. at least once every three months– display high levels of
feminist activism and we code them ‘1’. Others are coded ‘0’.
Table 6: Number of critical actors, by feminist activism
No frequent contacts Frequent contacts Total
Green parties 7 (32%) 15 (68%) 22
Socialist parties 11 (20%) 45 (80%) 56
Chr.-Democratic parties 2 (15%) 11 (85%) 13
Liberal parties 2 (20%) 8 (80%) 10
Regionalist parties 2 (40%) 3 (21%) 5
Conservative parties 8 (57%) 6 (43%) 14
Far Right parties 2 (100%) 0 (0%) 2
Other 2 (67%) 1 (33%) 3
Total 36 (29%) 89 (71%) 125
Note: The percentages refer to the proportion of representatives within the group of critical
actors in every party family. Differences are significant for Socialist parties (p<0.000) and
Christian Democratic, Liberal and Regionalist parties (p<0.01).
19
Table 6 demonstrates that a significant majority of critical actors (around 80 per cent) in three
traditional parties –Socialist, Christian Democratic and Liberal parties– does have frequent
contacts with women’s movements. Similar results are presented for Green parties. On the other
hand, having frequent contacts with the women’s movement is not associated with being a
critical actor in conservative parties. In the latter parties, critical actors can equally be found
among those representatives who have frequent contacts with the women’s movement as among
those who do not display such high levels of feminist activism.
6. Conclusion
The major finding of this article is that the group of critical actors claiming to substantively
represent women in parliament features a wide variety of characteristics. This contradicts the
view that substantive representation of women is an exclusive affair of left, women and feminist
MPs. The often assumed link between female identity and feminist awareness and activism on
the one hand and representatives’ substantive behavior for women on the other hand often does
not hold across the countries and parties included in our analysis. Even more so, in non-leftwing
parties, MPs’ sex and feminist orientations are unable to capture the critical actors in women’s
substantive representation.
In this article, we have treated party differences and country differences as differences in
ideology and gender regime. However, further research is needed in order to assess to what
extent institutional factors –amongst others parliamentary culture and traditions, the number of
women in parliament, the committees in which they have seats and power positions they
occupy– might affect the number of critical actors as well as the type of groups that come
forward as being the critical actors in the substantive representation of women. Furthermore,
institutions might also impact upon the number and type of representatives that in a survey of
interview setting claim to be critical actors. This problem of self-reporting can only be overcome
by confronting these claims with analysis of actual parliamentary behavior. Such an analysis
should also tackle another methodological shortcoming of this article, notably that our analysis
underscores the importance of the ‘initiating’ role representatives should play in the substantive
representation of women in order to be qualified as a critical actor.
20
How important these methodological issues are for the interpretation of our findings, they do not
undermine the main finding that women’s substantive representation is also an issue for MPs and
parties that have traditionally been seen as unimportant actors in the substantive representation of
women: rightwing, male and non-feminist MPs. This finding not only supports the thesis that in
order to fully understand processes of substantive representation of women research designs need
to include a broad variety of representatives as actors in women’s substantive representation. It
furthermore calls for normative, theoretical and empirical research that takes institutional
context, identity and ideology seriously.
Furthermore, male, non-feminist and non-left contributions to the substantive representation
evidently point at the need of a revision of substantive representation exclusively defined as a
feminist process strongly based on female life experiences framed in a left egalitarian ideology.
Indeed, our analysis shows that some men and rightwing MPs claim to represent women from a
rightist, non-feminist stance. What researchers define as ‘acting for women’ thus might need to
be rethought, especially if the substantive representation of women by these ‘unusual suspects’
establishes a greater responsiveness to the needs of women in society at large. Responsiveness to
the diverse needs of different kinds of women (for instance progressive and feminist as well as
conservative, religious and non-feminist women) is seen as a criterion for full democratic
representation of women46
. This does however not imply that we cannot discern between
different types of claims to represent women (for instance, feminist, non-feminist, or even anti-
feminist) and assess and weigh the (feminist) quality of these claims, confront them with actual
law making and with what women in society think and want. Quite on the contrary, a critical
assessment of these claims can only take off once we have included them into our research
designs.
46
Karen Celis, ‘Substantive Representation of Women (and improving it). What is and should it be
about?’, Comparative European Politics, 6, 4, 2009, pp.95-113; Lisa Dish, ‘Rethinking Responsiveness’,
Paper for the Annual Meeting of the Western Political Science Association, San Francisco; Eline Severs,
‘Representation as Claim-Making. Quid Responsiveness?’ Representation. Journal of Representative
Democracy, 46, 4, 2010, pp.411-23.
21
Appendix
Appendix 1: Regional parliaments under study
Country Regional parliaments
Belgium Parliament of the Brussels-Capital Region
Parliament of the German-speaking Community
Flemish Parliament
Walloon Parliament
Portugal Azores Regional Parliament
Madeira Regional Parliament
Switzerland Grand Council of Aargau
Grand Council of Neuchâtel
Grand Council of Uri
United Kingdom National Assembly for Wales
Scottish Parliament
22
Appendix 2: Response rates
N° of MPs Response N Response per cent
Belgium national 150 73 49
Belgium regional 313 98 31
Germany national 622 128 21
Hungary national 386 99 26
Ireland national 166 34 20
Netherlands national 150 65 43
Norway national 169 46 27
Poland national 460 49 11
Portugal national 230 72 31
Portugal regional 104 36 35
Switzerland national 200 67 34
Switzerland regional 319 114 36
United Kingdom national 645 46 7
United Kingdom regional 189 32 17
Total 4103 959 23
23
Appendix 3: Survey questions
Q1a. Thinking about women in society, how important is it to you, personally, to promote their
views and interests? (1-7, with 1 = ‘of no importance’ and 7 = ‘of great importance’)
Q1b. How important is it to you, personally, to promote the views and interests of a specific
group in society? (1-7, with 1 = ‘of no importance’ and 7 = ‘of great importance’)
Q2a. How often would you say you speak at the meetings of your parliamentary party group to
signal a situation in society that you consider disadvantageous for women? (‘(almost) at every
meeting’, ‘at least once a month’, ‘at least every three months’, ‘at least once a year’, ‘(almost)
never’)
Q2b. And how often would you say you yourself bring a proposal to your parliamentary party
group to resolve such a situation in society that you consider disadvantageous for women?
(‘(almost) at every meeting’, ‘at least once a month’, ‘at least every three months’, ‘at least once
a year’, ‘(almost) never’)
Q3. How about the following statements about women and men in society, what do you think?
(‘strongly disagree’, ‘disagree’, ‘neither’, ‘agree’, ‘strongly agree’)
- On the whole, women and men enjoy real equality today
- Government should ensure that women and men have equal opportunities
- Affirmative action is a legitimate measure to address the under-representation of women in
politics
- Women organizations are no longer necessary today
Q4. In your role as a Member of Parliament, how often in the last year have you had contact with
women’s organizations? (‘at least once a week’, ‘at least once a month’, ‘at least every three
months’, ‘at least once a year’, ‘(almost) no contact’)
24
Q5. In politics, people sometimes talk of left and right. Using the following scale, where 0 means
left and 10 means right, where would you place your own views? And where would you place
your (regional/national) party?