While a substantial number of studies have assessed the representation of women in Parliament in general, few studies have looked at the representation of women in Parliamentary committees. Yet, much of the real deliberation and lawmaking takes place in these committees, suggesting that a gender equal representation in the different committees is important and that women are not only represented within committees focusing on female issues such as education, family affairs or health. Our study looks at the representation of women in the German standing parliamentary committees between 1972 and 2009. We find that female MPs are more likely to attend committees related to typically female issues compared to men, though there is a trend towards more equality over the years. Looking at differences between women according to their party affiliation and taking insights from the critical mass theory, we also argue that a larger number of female MPs within a party will change the dominant (male) political culture within the party, and will lead women to be more likely to become members of other committees than the traditional “female” committees. Our results tend to confirm this pattern: women affiliated with parties with a higher representation of female MPs are more likely to be more equally represented among the different committees, irrespective of the absolute number of female MPs within the party. By contrast, female MPs affiliated with parties which have a low representation of women tend to belong mainly to committees handling issues typically seen as “female”.
