Less likely to rebel?: Gender and Party Loyalty in Swiss National Parliament

The increasing number of women entering parliaments raises questions about the impact of gender on legislative behavior. Recent research examines how increasing women's representation may impact policy outcomes and the attention given to different policy issues. But less research examines how women and men may behave differently in legislatures. In particular, we know little about whether and when women dissent from the party line and rebel in parliamentary voting, or whether they are more or less likely to vote at all. We hypothesise that women are less likely to rebel than their male counterparts and are also more likely to abstain. Additionally, we investigate whether the relationship between gender and the likelihood of rebellion and abstention depends on party and policy issue. We examine whether issues in the parliamentary debate are gendered, meaning that some issues are more likely to be talked about by men, and others by women. While we expect that women are less likely to dissent on issues they are concerned with, men are more likely to dissent when they focus on an issue. Finally, we expect that women affiliated with parliamentary groups that provide more conservative stances on gender equality are less likely to rebel. To test our expectations, we utilise the voting data of 454 members in the Swiss parliament between 2007 and 2020. Furthermore, to examine which issues in swiss parliamentary debates are gendered, we use a structural topic models approach. If women MPs are less likely to deviate from the party line, their increasing participation in parliamentary voting may have crucial implications for policy outcomes.