How Electoral Systems Influence the Behaviour of Women in Parliaments – Evidence from the German MMP System

Are women elected under different electoral systems equally likely to promote women’s interests in parliaments? Extensive scholarly work indicates that electoral institutional are key to understanding legislative behavior. Driven by electoral incentives, representatives either serve their parties because they rely on its support for re-election (e.g. in closed-list proportional systems) or develop an independent reputation to maximize votes (e.g. in first-past-the-post systems). However, whether and to what extent this pattern persists for MPs whose actions are strongly driven by their identity, in particular women, remains unclear to date. In this paper, I argue that electoral systems serve as a moderating factor enabling or disabling female legislators to follow their desire to promote gender-specific policy interests. Unique longitudinal data on the legislative behavior and characteristics of all German MPs in office between 1945 and 2017 enables me to put this hypothesis under empirical scrutiny. The mixed member proportional electoral system in Germany allows to compare the behavior of women elected via the proportional and majoritarian tier, while the cultural and political context remains constant. The analyses reveal that women elected through different electoral mechanisms vary systematically with regard to the topics of written requests and proposal they submit (original data), and their voting behavior during roll-call votes. Nevertheless, female representatives from both electoral tiers show distinct behavioral patterns if compared to their male colleagues. This evidence thus suggests that strategic considerations have the power to reduce the role of gender identity as a driver of legislative behavior, but do not overshadow them.