Multidimensional Women's Representation

The descriptive and substantive representation of women in national parliaments has been a major issue of scholarly and political concern. Recognising the importance of the issue, this paper introduces a new way of studying the representation of women, one that asks women how they want to be represented and examines whether their representatives meet these expectations. The paper specifically draws on the recently developed conceptual framework of multidimensional representation, which distinguishes between four dimensions of representation – surrogation, justification, personalisation, and responsiveness. It develops testable hypotheses about how female constituents’ demands for representation vary depending on the gender of their representative, as well as how the behaviour of representatives differs depending on their own gender. The hypotheses are tested using original survey data from the United Kingdom and data on divisions and speeches in the House of Commons. The results show high levels congruence between the wishes of female constituents and the behaviour of female MPs on the dimensions of surrogation and justification, but not on other dimensions. What emerges is a more complex, nuanced and citizen-centred picture of women’s representation.