Male MPs and the Representation of Women's Interests ꟷ The Effect of Electoral Security and Election Proximity

Research on women’s political representation traditionally assumes that female MPs are more likely to represent women’s interests in parliament. So far, however, the role of male MPs in the substantive representation of women has mainly been neglected. This paper asks about the political and institutional conditions that affect the proclivity of male MPs to represent women’s interests in parliament. It particularly explores the role of electoral security in this regard and seeks to answer the research question whether the re-election prospects of male MPs affect their proclivity to pay attention to the concerns of women. Drawing on the concept of a “gendered leeway”, we theoretically expect that male MPs are not blamed if they do not represent women’s interests, but that they can gain additional credit if they support women’s issues. Thus, male MPs will become more likely to speak on behalf of women if their electoral security is low and they are therefore forced to fight for additional votes to get re-elected. This behavior should become more pronounced in the advent of an election. Empirically, the paper analyzes the representation of women’s issues in the UK and Germany between 1998 and 2013 using automated content coding of early day motions and parliamentary questions, respectively. The results of hurdle regression models show that male MPs become more likely to represent women’s issues if their re-election is at risk. The timing effect is not as pronounced as theoretically expected.