BEYOND THE USUAL SUSPECTS: THE ROLE OF …...of knowledge about the activities of these unusual...

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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***

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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’

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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.

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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







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


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







Other 2 (67%) 1 (33%) 3

Total 36 (29%) 89 (71%) 125


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

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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?

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