Welfare Works: Explaining Female Legislative Representation

Frances McCall Rosenbluth, Robert Salmond, Michael F. Thies
2006 Social Science Research Network  
This study aims to advance our understanding of why women are underrepresented in legislatures around the world, and what accounts for the wide variation over time and across countries. Scholars generally agree on many of the favorable conditions for women to enter parliament, including, inter alia, proportional representation, leftism in government, and female employment. However, the mechanisms that link women's seat shares to the supposed explanatory factors are still poorly understood. In
more » ... is study, we argue that the key link resides in welfare state policies that 1) free women to enter the paid workforce, 2) provide public sector jobs that disproportionately employ women, and 3) change the political interests of working women enough to create an ideological gender gap. The emergence of this gender gap, in turn, creates incentives for parties to compete for the female vote, and one way that they do so is to include more and more women in their parliamentary delegations.
doi:10.2139/ssrn.1158637 fatcat:mfa5aexvnnf5hpbw6ogmjsmf6u