Who gets to speak? Gender and parliamentary floor access in Ghana and South Africa

A recent overview of parliamentary debates around the world has found that the gender gap when it comes to MPs’ access to parliamentary floor is quite prevalent but not ubiquitous. What can explain this variation? We will address this puzzle by drawing on an original dataset of parliamentary speeches in Ghana (2005-2020) and South Africa (1999-2020). These are two established African democracies that have been able to hold free and fair elections since the early 1990s and share highly institutionalized party systems. But they vary in two crucial dimensions that make this empirical analysis relevant. First, they have very distinct electoral systems: Ghana is presidential and employs a plurality electoral system, while South Africa is a parliamentary system with proportional representation system. Secondly, they vary in the share of female representation in parliament: South Africa is the 10th country in the world in this ranking and its biggest party (African National Congress) has voluntary gender quotas, while Ghana lags in the 146th position and has no such provisions either at the party or national level. Beyond these two dimensions we will also test how gender might interact with leadership position affecting floor access. By analysing two diverse cases and their trajectories through time this study allows us to leverage our explanations on the individual and contextual level factors that determine access to the floor. This paper offers contributions to the research agenda that investigates gender imbalances in the legislative agenda, by shedding light on a crucial point for gender equality and how complex these imbalances can be.