This paper examines the substantive representation of a highly relevant topic in which several interests need to be represented: poverty. Representative claims of multiple actors - acting both inside and outside legislatures - about poverty in socio-political debates on housing are analyzed through the use of Critical Frame Analysis. The aim is twofold: identifying substantive representatives by studying the creative process of constructing substantive representation of poverty on the one hand, and examining how poverty is framed – in terms of defining the problem and solution, attributed roles within these definitions, and voices heard in this process – on the other hand. Relating to the topic of this panel, we are particularly interested in processes of exclusion that exist in the formulation of representative claims. Are these claims about poverty gendered? Does poverty have a female face? And is this face primarily white?
