Presidents and prime ministers around the world are appointing more women to their cabinets than ever before. In large part, this trend is due to the fact that cabinets are increasingly seen as sites of symbolic representation, and not just policymaking or implementation. Scholars of ministerial recruitment and cabinet functioning have not fully addressed the consequences of changing ideas about representation in cabinet, and, as such, still tend to focus on the partisan and political backgrounds of ministers. My presentation focuses on the ways in which presidents and prime ministers use cabinet appointments to send signals to citizens about government priorities, and the deeper normative commitments of a particular leader. I then outline some useful research strategies for analyzing this dimension of cabinet appointments, focusing primarily on the question of what female ministers may be intended to symbolize, and what kind of evidence scholars can seek to uncover the symbolic intentions of presidents and prime ministers.
