Intersectionality at Play: the Parliamentary Representation of Women and Ethnic Minorities

While there has been much research on women’s political representation and ethnic minorities’ political representation, there is very little about the intersection of these two, argued WAPPP Fellow Liza Mügge in this week’s seminar. In her lecture, titled “Gender and Ethnicity in Parliamentary Representation,” Mügge, an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Amsterdam, presented her findings, which are part of a stream of research on gendered representation of minorities.

Professor Mügge explained that parliamentary representation of minority groups is important, both because equal representation is a social justice concern, but also because research shows that having political representation close to actual proportions within the population of a particular society is necessary for that society to remain peaceful.

Mügge conducted an analysis of the makeup of the Dutch Parliament starting in 1986, the year that that the first ethnic minority Member of Parliament (MP) was elected. The analysis focused on both descriptive and substantive representation and named three transition phases for an individual to be elected to office: 1) ineligible to aspirant, 2) aspirant to candidate and 3) candidate to elected. Mügge then used an intersectionality lens to understand why there were many more minority women than men in office in the 1980s and 1990s and how candidates can learn from their specific challenges and successes.

Member of Parliament Sadet Karabulut

In phase one, the primary criterion to transition from ineligible to an aspirant is Dutch citizenship. With a massive increase in naturalization during the 1990s and the fact that post-colonial immigrants were already Dutch citizens, this was not a significant barrier. Education level also factors in, and Mügge argued that part of the success of ethnic minority women is due to the education gender gap: 54% of ethnic minority undergraduate students are female. Ethnic minorities are disadvantaged in labor market participation, and political participation varies greatly by nationality, with Turks and Moroccans’ turnout close to that of those with European ancestry at about 57%, while Antillean immigrants are much lower at 18%.

In the second phase, how diversity is regulated and the availability of identity networks are crucial. The Green Party and Social Democrats have highly institutionalized women sections for networking and strategy and strong, though informal, minority sections. Mügge argued that the gender progressiveness of the Social Democrats especially has spilled over to include ethnic minorities, thereby helping female minority candidates win.

In phase three, the challenge comes down to whether the candidates are given winnable seats. Only 6% of all ethnic minority candidates across the elections studied were in a winnable seat, though there was not a significant difference between male and females candidates. 

Many, but not all, of the factors that boost women’s participation also increase ethnic minority representation. Leftist ideology that has often supported more gender parity in government also supports ethnic minorities in general, but civil society networks work for ethnic minority women much better than for ethnic minority men. 

Mügge concluded by explaining the issue in terms of demand and supply. The large increase of eligible citizens since the 1990s has created MP supply, while changing ideology and the availability of networks has created demand. At the end of the day, the political parties are the most influential gatekeepers, however, and they continue to greatly affect gender and ethnicity representation in Parliament. 

More Women Can Run (and should)

A few months ago, we looked at some of the hurdles that women face when running for elected office. In this week’s seminar, however, Kira Sanbonmatsu of Rutgers University discussed her new book with Susan Carroll on how, in fact, More Women Can Run.

It’s a strange paradox that on many counts, women are more politically involved than men---since 1980s, they’ve voted at a higher rate, for example---but still comprise less than ¼ of most state legislatures and less than 18% of the US Congress.

Sanbonmatsu and Carroll surveyed a number of successful female candidates for state legislature around the country for their views on electoral success. In spite of enduring impediments like male incumbency bias and the fact that women are often socialized to behave in certain ways, results from the survey provided three important reasons why and how the decision to run can be made easier for women.

First, successful female officials provided a vast array of answers on the qualifications necessary to run for office. Some said education and personability were vital, others suggested engagement with the community, still others said an enduring electoral base or fundraising ability was the key to success. The conclusion is that there are, in fact, no specific qualifications for electoral success, and successful women come from a wide diversity of backgrounds. Many more women are in fact qualified than realize it.

Second, the decision to run is often more related to a woman’s relationships and networks---certainly more so than for men. For example, a woman is more likely to run for office if a political party leader, spouse, or organization encourages her to do so, than she would be on her own volition. While this relational dependency seems like a barrier, it also means that women’s initial tendencies against running can be changed with a little encouragement; that their initial socialization can be nudged. Increasing women’s representation, then, might just be accomplished with some effective recruitment.

Lastly, some of the current gender disparity, in particular the fact that women’s representation in state legislatures has plateaued in recent years, has more to do with party composition than the role of women per se. While Democratic women hold 32.3% of their party's seats in state legislatures, Republican women hold 16.5%. Today, women are better represented as Democratic state legislators. Changes in partisan politics, then, have had consequences for overall representation of women. According to Sanbonmatsu, this should not be understood as a loss for women generally, but an opportunity for each party to include more women, both parties recruit more female candidates, particularly women of color.

Despite some of the other hurdles, more women can run with more ease than they think---and considering some of the benefits of having women represented, should.

Make the Road by Running: Why don’t women want to run for office?

Needless to say, women are severely underrepresented in elected office in the United States. Only 17% of the federal House of Representatives, 20% of the US Senate, 10% of state governors, 26% of state legislators, and 12% of big-city City Halls are women. Ninety-five countries surpass the US in women’s representation in national legislatures---and America’s actually been slipping further in the last few years.

This is definitely due to some of the common culprits, like media bias against women, the fact that women have less experience in feeder professions like corporate leadership and government---though this is changing slowly---and voter preference for those incumbents (men) who have already been in office, to say nothing of pure sexism.

 

Women of the US Senate

But, according to Jennifer Lawless, Professor of Government at American University and one of the country’s leading experts on women’s political participation, the main reason for the underrepresentation of women in politics is a lack of political ambition.

In this week’s WAPPP seminar on “Uncovering the Origins of the Gender Gap in Political Ambition,” Professor Lawless discussed how early socialization affects people’s political views: if girls are raised in a very politically active family that discusses politics and exposes them to those ideas, they’re more likely to be interested in getting involved. But in a national sample of young people, political ambition begins to stratify just as early, with women saying they would rather be business owners or teachers before they would even consider running for local office.

This stratification, however, gets even worse in college: by then, men are not only more competitive, self-confident, and perceived to be culturally “appropriate” for political leadership, but they get more involved in political activities by that age.

Why don’t women? Is it because of the specific responsibilities in elected office, or all the painful political mudslinging people have to suffer in order to get there?

According to those same surveys, women are equally likely to want to improve their communities. They’re just not sure if public office is the right way to do it.

But having more women in elected office is not just equitable, but produces better policy and political outcomes. In the recent US Federal government shutdown, as one Huffington Post article put it, “Men Got Us Into The Shutdown, Women Got Us Out”--referring to a bipartisan group of female Senators who broke the impasse by committing to negotiation.

So how do we encourage greater female political ambition? The Democratic National Committee’s quota of reserving 50% of their delegations for women hasn’t produced the outcomes we’ve sought.

Professor Lawless offered some excellent advice from her own unsuccessful campaign for US Congress in Rhode Island. She confessed that, though her candidacy was made much easier by the fact that she didn’t have to juggle a regular career, family, and a public political life simultaneously (as many other women do), the path was nonetheless fraught with discrimination and emotional frustration. But the experience of running is itself empowering; gender stereotyping is a self-fulfilling prophecy that can only be undone when more and more women realize that it gets better. Having women set their own ambitions higher and working towards them paves a smoother path for others.

Women can only make the road by running.



Photo source.

Heroes and Sheroes - Inspiring Women's Political Participation

All of us have heroes. People we’ve seen succeed; whom we want to emulate. When we have something in common with those heroes, it’s even more inspiring: that success feels even more tangible because, “if they can do it, so can I!”

But female political heroes are unfortunately too difficult to come by. Women represent over half of the population in most countries. And when women are involved in policy-making, there are often better education, health, and economic mobility outcomes for the whole society. Yet women make up only 11% of elected political office in India, 18% in the US, and 22% in the UK and China! Getting a few more women---even by quotas---should inspire others to participate too, right?

At today’s WAPPP Seminar, Lakshmi Iyer of Harvard Business School presented her research on “Path Breakers: How Does Women’s Political Participation Respond to Electoral Success?” Professor Iyer and her colleagues look at state level elections in India to see whether simply having women candidates run and succeed affects whether more women will try to run in the future. They crunch a lot of interesting data, and conclude that there is, in fact, an increase in the number of women who run as candidates after they see other women succeed.

But in looking at some of the details, they also find that most of this increase is simply because earlier female candidates run again (rather than new women necessarily getting inspired), and that there’s no impact on whether more women will vote.

If you want to increase and sustain the number of women in higher elected office, simply encouraging quotas---a requirement on the number of women in an elected body---may not be the best way. In India, the nature of democracy may be a stranger impediment: parties tend to select candidates not based on their aptitude or ideology, but by their "winnability"---which often includes association or family connections. Leaving the process to itself, according to Professor Iyer, may not change the situation for generations.

Yet the effect of their presence---even if enforced by quotas---on policy-making may be an important factor. If the mere presence a woman on a governing body can have a tangible influence on how that organization functions and what it does, it might well be worth it, regardless of how she got there.