Representing by not representing: women and ethnic representatives during Covid-19 pandemic

Do minority MPs, belonging both to women and ethnic groups, represent the interests of their own groups during the COVID-19 pandemic? Research questioning the gendered and ethnic effects of the COVID-19 crisis has shown that it has more devasting impact on women and ethnic/ minority members in comparison with the male and majoritarian population, regardless of the sphere: health, labour market, domestic labour as well as politics. As such, especially when it comes to political representation, it is even more important to explore whether national representatives of these groups are sensitive to such disparities and reacted to represent their constituencies. Although the link between the descriptive representation and substantive representation is not always present, women and ethnic members presence and activity inside representative bodies is important, among other reasons, because these members can expose different experiences, views and interests, helping to dilute the male and majority groups perspectives and to reduce inequality. In order to explore this gap, this paper analyses the activity of minority representatives in the Romanian Parliament and adopts a broader definition of the term minority, which includes both women and ethnic groups. Romania represents an important case study, not only because of the lack of research on substantive representation of women and ethnic groups, but also because of its ‘diversity’ as it has on its territory 20 recognised minority groups represented in the parliament. This allows for a comparison of the activity of ethnic representatives, being possible to identify any similarities/differences. Additionally, considering that women and ethnic groups face similar barriers when it comes to their political representation, women’s activity in the parliament can also be included in the analysis and compared to the ones of ethnic representatives. The paper covers the parliamentary questions from the period March 2020-December 2021 and uses quantitative and qualitative content analysis. Preliminary results show that women rarely address gender disparities, regardless of the issue discussed. Compared to ethnic minorities, women tend to address their interests in a higher proportion than ethnic representatives, however the difference is small. Such results highlight the need of further research on the area, especially with regards to the agency of such representatives as well as possible factors that hinder it.