Let’s talk about sex! Male MPs claiming to represent women’s interests in plenary debates

How do male representatives change the way they represent as more women enter parliaments? Extensive scholarly work engages with the growing number of women in legislatures around the world and highlights their distinct policy priorities and communication style. Comparably little is known about the reactions of male MPs to the changing gender composition of parliaments. In this paper, I therefore explore how this development impacts claims to represent by male legislators. Building on the literature proposing that women’s presence in parliament transforms the policy-making process, the proposition that men increasingly claim to represent the well-being of female citizens is put under empirical scrutiny. For that purpose, I rely on original data from all German state legislatures between 1990 and 2020. The analyses focus on minutes of plenary debates that engage with four topics: Violence against women, childcare, housing, and the budget of the ministry of interior. The evidence presented in this paper uncovers to what extent women’s increasing presence in parliaments has the potential to raise the awareness for women’s distinct interests in the policy-making process.