Does Speaking on Issues of Women or Gender Equality Harm the Political Career of MPs?

Feminist institutionalist research shows that parliamentary issues and agendas considered masculine are often acknowledged as worth more than those considered female (Kathlene 1995; Weldon 2002). In turn, Franceschet concludes that this phenomenon “may lead women seeking to advance their political careers to eschew the less prestigious “women’s issues” in favor of policy issues considered more prestigious” (Franceschet 2011, 65). Though, the level of women descriptive representation in the Danish parliament is fairly high (39,1 of the 179 are currently women), interviews with Danish MPs illustrate that MPs are cautious not to speak too much of gender equality. Accordingly, MPs from different parties, of different age and of different genders, testify that ambiguous MPs should think twice before entering debates on issues of gender equality since doing so might hurt their career. “It will mark you” is the exact phrase used independently by more than one MP. As showed by new institutionalists studies, not only institutions—but also perceptions of such institutions—may influence the behavior of actors (Erikson 2018). Thus, though it might not be objectively true the mere story that acting on issues of women or issues of gender equality will damage the career of an MP may keep MPs from doing so. In other words, even if this phenomenon is a mere myth if not proven wrong it may have real consequences for women substantive representation. Accordingly, the myth needs to be empirical tested and through a comparative analysis of the political career path of MPs who have acted on gender equality and members who have not this paper tests exactly this. The paper applies a new data set in which the independent variable, “have members acted on issues of women and gender equality or nor,” is measured through the questions posed by MPs to ministers in the weekly question hour in the period 2003 to 2017 (Green Pedersen and Bjerre Mortensen*)). The dependent variable, the career path of the MPs, is measured though the degree to which members have gained leader positions within the party. We check for interfering variables such as MPs ‘elective success’ and the degree to which actors who have acted on gender equality and gained a political career have also acted on issues of very high prestige. *) the data has been gathered by Christoffer Green-Pedersen and Peter Bjerre Mortensen with support from the Danish Social Science Research Council and the Research Foundation at Aarhus University, The Danish Agenda Project. For further details see www.agendasetting.dk.