When do Men Represent Women’s Interests in Parliament? Evidence from the German Bundestag

Research on the substantive representation of women traditionally assumes that female MPs more strongly represent women’s interests in parliament than their male colleagues. Previous research has therefore mostly been focused on the behavior of female MPs, asking how and when women represent the interests and preferences of female constituents. So far, however, the role of male MPs as potential critical actors in the substantive representation of women has mainly been neglected. This paper aims to fill this gap and presents one of the first empirical analyses of the extent to which male MPs represent women’s interests in parliament. In doing so, the analysis examines the institutional conditions under which men are more likely to act on the behalf of women and seeks to answer the question if an increased presence of female MPs has an effect on the parliamentary behavior of men. Drawing on the assumptions of critical mass theory, three possible effects might occur: (1) Men will start to more strongly act on the behalf of women if female MPs put women’ issues on the agenda (spillover effect), (2) female politicians, even if there are many of them, will not influence male politicians’ views (null effect), or (3) male MPs will get less supportive of gender issues (backlash effect). Empirically, the paper analyzes the substantive representation of women in the German Bundestag between 1990 and 2013. To measure substantive representation, I am using an automated content analysis of written and oral parliamentary questions. The original dataset contains information on the number of questions with a women specific concern that each legislator has submitted. Using zero-inflated beta regressions, the results of the analysis will show if an increased number of female MPs affects the efforts of men to cater to female voters and if this linkage mechanism changes over time.