Complex Descriptive Representation: Proportionality of Occupation and Gender in Australia

One conceptualization of 'good representation' may be analogized as a kind of mirror on the populace. A 'perfect' political assembly, therefore, reflects both the political and demographic composition of the country without distortion. Progress toward more statistically representative legislatures is simple to measure in cases where there is only one under-represented group of interest; accordingly, we have tracked the slow but steady improvement in the presence of women and marginalized groups across liberal democracies. However, the descriptive representation literature has not yet settled on an effective method to describe and summarize under-representation among multiple subgroups of the population simultaneously. To this end, I propose a method derivative of the Gallagher index (used in measures of proportionality of electoral systems), which enables a summary statistic for multiple groups that is a multi-dimensional generalization of the gender gap. I then apply the measure to the representation of occupational class in the Australian Parliament (1985-2020) to show that, while the representation of women has improved significantly since the 1980s, the representation of occupational class has declined slightly. The method and findings contribute to a nascent literature that is concerned with the consequences of complex descriptive representation (for example, the interplay of gender and occupation) for the quality of democratic outcomes.