Whose bread I eat, their song I sing? How the sex of MPs influences the use of oversight mechanisms in government and opposition

How does the use of oversight mechanisms in government and opposition differ depending on the sex of the MP in question? While previous research has analysed the use of oversight mechanisms such as parliamentary questions in general, especially with regard to who keeps tabs on whom, we still know nothing about differences of behaviour depending on the sex of the MP. This is surprising since it is quite likely that women and men will differ, especially with regard to the likelihood to stick to norm-confirming behaviour. Oversight mechanisms are traditional tools for opposition parties to monitor the government even though coalition parties also make use of them to control their partners. Still, the norm is that oversight mechanisms are mainly used by the opposition. Since newness to politics as well as risk aversity enhance women’s likelihood to behave more norm-confirming, we expect that women will make more use of oversight mechanisms when they are in opposition and less when they are in government compared to men. We further assume that this differences between women and men will depend on party membership (i.e. women in right-wing parties are more likely to display norm-confirming behaviour than women in left-wing parties) and tenure (i.e. differences in norm-confirming behaviour due to sex is likely to decrease over time). To test our hypotheses, we rely on time-series data from the German Bundestag using the “Every single word” data set by Remschel and Kroeber (2021). We capture MPs’ oversight activities through three different indicators: The number of written and oral questions submitted by a MP to the government, the number of minor requests support by an MP without the support of his/her fraction, and the number of proposals supported by an MP without his/her fraction. The results of our analysis will have important implications for our understanding of the influence of gender on behaviour in parliament and coalition governance.