Our proposal addresses the influence of multilevel politics in women’s recruitment and circulation in parliamentary cabinets. There is an increasing literature on the role of social, structural, ideological and political factors explaining the recruitment of women for cabinet positions. However, there is a significant lack in linking these factors with the multilevel context that we may find in most West-European countries. Indeed, the existence of multilevel government does affect the decision of who may be hired and fired as cabinet members. This is particularly true in countries where the institutionalization and empowerment of subnational authorities may reduce the amount of national cabinet ministers coming from the national parliament. National ministers may previously serve as regional ministers or in the regional parliament before moving to the national level. Moreover, multilevel settings may enhance the circulation of members between both national and regional layers, reducing the survival of members at one level while increasing the total length of their ministerial careers. This trend opens up the recruitment pool of ministers and challenges the appointment of female cabinet members.
This paper intends to analyse in how far the phenomenon of multilevel government has an impact on the recruitment of female ministers. The main hypothesis of our paper (multilevel settings affects gender representation in parliamentary cabinets) will be checked by analysing over time and in a comparative perspective: whether multilevel careers affects the women cabinet recruitment at both levels; whether multilevel politics affects the durability of women at any of both levels; whether multilevel politics affects the reappointment of women in subsequent reshuffles. Our paper employs data from 1980 to 2013 from all national and regional cabinet appointments in Spain (national cabinet plus 17 regional cabinets) and Belgium (national cabinet plus 6 regional cabinets), using statistical tools such logistic regression and event history analysis.
