Gender and Political Representation Before and After the Great Recession, 2008-2017

The social and economic crisis that developed after 2008 affected Portuguese women disproportionately and coincided with the implementation of gender quotas and a feminization of Parliament. These circumstances warrant an assessment of women's substantive representation during this time. In this article, we argue that the ideological congruence between citizens and MPs is a useful concept to understand how women, or any other social group for that matter, are adequately represented. Existent research showed that during the crisis (2008-2013), and especially for (left-right) socioeconomic issues, there was a move towards greater polarization at the elite level which was not matched at the voters' level. Moreover, this was mainly due to the centre-right party move further towards the neoliberal right, and that increased the already existent mismatch between MPs and their constituents on the right in socioeconomic issues. We want to see, within each of the parties, how evolved gender substantive representation, both in terms of socioeconomic and in terms of cultural issues, during the crisis. We analyse these issues relying on a set of mass and elite (MPs) surveys, 2008-2012-2016, and using different techniques to measure congruence (relative and absolute) between voters and MPs.