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Women's Legislative Underrepresentation: Enough Come Forward, (Still) Too Few Chosen

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 June 2017

Jeanette Ashe
Jeanette Ashe*
Affiliation:
Douglas College
*
Department of Political Science, Douglas College, New Westminster, British Columbia, V3M5Z5, email: ashej@douglascollege.ca
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Abstract

No established liberal democracy has achieved sex balance in its national legislature. Scholars agree skewed candidate pools put forward by parties during elections cause sex-disproportionate seat distribution, but disagree as to whether disproportionality is caused by too few women aspirant candidates coming forward (supply) or party selectors preferring men (demand). This paper uses a multistage method to explore supply and demand during the British Labour party's candidate selection process. Rare data from three elections and 4622 aspirants allow for an unobstructed look inside the secret garden of politics and reveal the party is not fully feminized insofar that women aspirants are disproportionally filtered out of its selection process and are disproportionally underrepresented in its candidate pool. Testing reveals a lack of selector demand for women aspirants has a greater impact on women's underrepresentation than an undersupply of women aspirants, a finding which supports using sex quotas to level imbalanced candidate slates.

Résumé

Aucune démocratie libérale établie n’a achevé une représentation égale des hommes et des femmes au sein de son assemblée législative nationale. Les chercheurs conviennent que les bassins de candidats inégalitaires présentés par les partis politiques lors des élections entraînent une répartition disproportionnée des sièges, mais sont en désaccord quant à savoir si la disproportion est due au nombre trop faible de candidates qui aspirent à se présenter (offre) ou bien aux sélectionneurs des partis qui donnent une préférence aux candidatures masculines (demande). Cet article utilise une méthode à degrés multiples pour examiner l’offre et la demande durant le processus de sélection des candidatures du Parti travailliste britannique. Les rares données disponibles dans le contexte de trois élections et 4622 candidats offrent une vue pénétrante dans le jardin secret de la politique et révèlent que le parti n’est pas vraiment féminisé tant que les candidatures féminines sont filtrées de façon disproportionnée à l’issue du processus de sélection et sont sous-représentées en conséquence dans son bassin de candidats. Les tests révèlent qu’une demande insuffisante des candidates féminines de la part des sélectionneurs a un impact plus significatif sur la sous-représentation des femmes qu’une offre trop faible de femmes qui se portent candidates : une constatation à l’appui de l’introduction de quotas visant à rétablir l’équilibre sur les listes électorales.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 50 , Special Issue 2: Finding Feminism , June 2017 , pp. 597 - 613
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 2017 

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Footnotes

I am grateful for feedback on an earlier draft of this paper provided at the 2015 European Conference on Politics and Gender, Uppsala University and the 2015 CPSA Finding Feminisms roundtable, University of Ottawa. I am also grateful for the feedback provided by the CJPS's reviewers, and Joni Lovenduski, Rosie Campbell, and Kennedy Stewart. Lastly, I thank the many Labour party officials and aspirants for their participation in this study.

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