Gender representation in expert groups

There is a growing concern with representation on expert bodies. The traditional view was that selection to expert institutions should be based on merit and qualifications only. Yet, representativeness has become increasingly important alongside competence when composing expert bodies: The expectation is that these bodies should not only offer the best professional or academic expertise, but also fulfill a requirement of descriptive representation, that is, have a composition that reflects the population they serve, in terms of gender, race, etc. This is decisive for the democratic credentials of expert bodies, it is argued, but also for the quality of their advice and decisions. Still, while there is by now a large literature on descriptive representation in bureaucracies and courts, scholarship on descriptive representation in expert advisory bodies remains limited. The paper zooms in on descriptive gender representation on expert advisory bodies and aims to examine three questions: (1) To what extent are women proportionally represented on expert advisory bodies? (2) How can we explain gender parity in representation or the lack thereof? (3) Do the identified patterns of gender representation constitute a problem from a normative point of view? The paper investigates these questions in the context of Norwegian ad hoc advisory commissions, arguably a most likely case for gender parity: Not only is Norway among the world’s most gender-equal societies, with a comparatively high and increasing share of women in political positions of power. Since the 1983, advisory commissions have also been legally required to have “as equal as possible” representation of women and men, in 1996 this was specified to “at least 40 percent”. Relying on a large-n dataset with information on the gender composition of more than 1500 advisory commissions appointed over nearly half a century, we trace trends in gender participation over time and within different member categories. We find that even if the share of women on advisory commissions has increased steadily over time and practically reached parity in the 2010s, women are still significantly under-represented among commission chairs and among academics appointed to commissions, whereas there is gender parity among civil servants and interest group representatives on commissions. Moreover, men still dominate among academic members from the discipline of economics while women are proportionally represented or over-represented among academic members from other disciplines. The paper discusses explanations and normative implications of these findings.