Women's representation and legislative committee appointments : the case of the Argentine provinces

Artículo originalOver the last two decades a large number of countries worldwide have adopted a gender quota to increase women’s political representation in the legislature. While quotas are designed to improve women’s representation in legislative positions, it is unclear if electing more women to legislative office is sufficient to accomplish institutional incorporation. Once women are elected to office, are they being incorporated into the legislative body and gaining their own political power, or are they being marginalized?Using an original data set that tracks committee appointments in the twenty-two Argentine legislative chambers over an eighteen-year period (from 1992-2009), I evaluate the extent to which women have access to powerful committee appointments –beyond traditional women’s domains committees– andhow women’s access to committee appointments changes over time. I hypothesize that while women may initially be sidelined, as they gain more experience in the legislature they may overcome institutional barriers and develop institutional knowledge that will better equip them to work within the system to gain access to valuable committee appointment

The Need for Research in Broadening Participation

Underrepresentation in computing is a global problem, marked by a disturbing lack of access to computing resources and education among people underrepresented by race, ethnicity, gender, income, disability, and sexual-orientation status. It is urgent that we address this divide between those with and without the knowledge to create computational artifacts or even basic functional literacy. Important alliances for broadening participation (BP) are catalyzing efforts to engage more people in computing, but they are not enough. We need solid research as well

Making Space for Women: Explaining Citizen Support for Legislative Gender Quotas in Latin America

Gender quotas have been adopted in over a hundred countries in an effort to address gender disparities in national legislatures. Yet the determinants of citizen support for gender quota policies remain largely understudied. We develop a theory that emphasizes the impact of institutional performance and political values to explain citizen support for gender quotas and how these two factors differentially influence men’s and women’s quota support. Based on data for 24 Latin American countries, we find that citizens in countries with relatively good governance quality who express a strong preference for government involvement to improve citizens’ well-being show the highest levels of quota support. Further, whereas good governance increases quota support at a higher rate among men than women, preferences for government involvement exert a stronger influence on women’s support for quotas. Consequently, good governance quality reduces the gender gap in quota support by substantially increasing men’s support for quotas

Gender Quotas, Women’s Representation, and Legislative Diversity

Diversity in the characteristics of political leaders increases the quality of policy, perceptions of legitimacy, and accountability to constituents. Yet, increasing leaders’ diversity proves one of the most difficult challenges facing modern democracy. Efforts like gender quotas shift descriptive representation on the targeted characteristic, but critics argue that women selected via quotas are as homogenous as those selected via traditional methods. In this article, we theorize that quotas (re)conceptualize views of potential political leaders and transform party recruitment networks. In doing so, quotas increase the diversity of all leaders in office. We evaluate these claims with a new measure of diversity and a data set of over 1,700 legislators in Argentinian subnational government. We show that quotas increase the professional and personal diversity of women and men in office over time, suggesting that electoral gender quotas transform parties, political networks, and how women (and men) perceive political office

Gender Quotas and The Representation of Women: Empowerment, Decision-making, and Public Policy

Over the past two decades governments worldwide have begun to take action to correct gender disparity in representative bodies, resulting in drastic increases in women’s numeric representation. It is unclear, however, how these increases influence legislative behavior. This research contributes to our understanding of how increases in women’s numeric representation influences substantive representation of women. I collected an original dataset to examine this relationship across twenty-three subnational Argentine legislatures over eighteen years. This project represents one of the first empirical efforts to examine women’s substantive representation over a large number of legislatures over a long duration of time. A key piece of the puzzle is to understand if female exhibit distinct preferences from their male colleagues. The second chapter of the dissertation uses a new data set of ideal point estimates recovered from cosponsorship data to examine gender differences in legislative preferences. I find strong evidence to suggest women display different legislative preferences than their male colleagues. Chapter three investigates how increases in women’s numeric representation influence women’s legislative behavior. Previous research suggests that increasing women’s numeric representation should enhance the probability that women work together to pursue common legislative agendas. Yet, I demonstrate that as the percentage of women in the chamber increases, women are increasingly less likely to work together. I argue that this unexpected finding can be explained by considering how institutions shape women’s legislative incentives. In chapter four, I develop theoretical expectations about the conditions under which increases in the proportion of female legislators, in combination with institutional arrangements, will foster or stifle women’s opportunities and incentives to represent women’s interests. The chapter provides strong empirical support for the hypothesis that women behave differently conditional on institutional incentives. These findings imply that understanding institutions is key to understanding how and when female representatives will stand for women. Taken together, this dissertation makes an important contribution to our understanding of how changes in the proportion of female legislators and differences in institutional contexts shape women’s legislative behavior