What Israeli Knesset Members Choose to Promote? A Gender Based Comparison

Substantive representation of women and men seeks to represent them in society and to advance their interests. This is obviously a complex task since it is very difficult to define the nature of these feminine and masculine interests and perceptions whose promotion constitutes substantive representation in a given society. Despite the conceptual and methodological dissimilarities between the studies, most of them in fact find differences between the behavior of men and women parliamentarians (Saint-Germain, 1989; Thomas, 1994; Burrell, 1997; Dodson and Carroll, 1991; Wängnerud, 2000; Stewart 2001; Schwindt-Bayer, 2006). In my study, I wish to examine whether male and female Knesset members display different patterns of parliamentary behavior. If so, can I point at distinct policy issues in which men and women differ? Moreover, can I apply the traditional division between "women's issues" and "non-women's issues" to these perceived differences? In order to answer those questions I will examine the activity of Israeli male and female legislators through three central parliamentary mechanisms: legislation (at different stages), parliamentary questions and committee membership. These three mechanisms represent the main fields of parliamentary activity Israeli MPs engage with. Furthermore, in analyzing Israeli legislators' parliamentary activity I adopt Schwindt-Bayer's (2006) typology (with slight changes) and use 9 thematic categories: "Women's issues", "children/family", "education and culture", "health", "welfare", "economics", "agriculture", "fiscal issues" and "national security". I wish to see whether male and female legislators differ in the way they prioritize these categories and how often do they engage in parliamentary activity linked to them. My hypothesis suggests that Israeli legislators will demonstrate differences in their parliamentary activity based on their gender, as do other legislators in many Western democracies. Such gendered differences will be strengthened in Israel due to its special social-political characteristics, first and foremost, the predominance of security issues. Preliminary results find proof to support the hypothesis. Israeli female legislators promote issues that can be classified under the category of "women's issues", much more than male legislators who promote mainly "non-women's issues". In this regard, Israeli legislators are no different than many female legislators in other Western democracies. However, at the same time, my findings also show that Israeli female legislators do not refrain from dealing with economics or security issues, despite their allegedly "masculine" nature, and do engage in parliamentary activity in those areas. This suggests that the gender division between men and women is not as dichotomous as one would think.