Who Gets Asked? Gender and the Politics of Parliamentary Questions to Ministers in New Zealand

Parliamentary questions provide a crucial window into the everyday practices of representation and accountability. They reveal which ministers attract attention, who directs that attention, and how patterns of questioning reflect underlying hierarchies of visibility and power (Martin and Rozenberg 2014; Höhmann and Sieberer 2019; Dodeigne, Erzeel and Randour 2024). For this reason, feminist scholars have investigated parliamentary questions as an avenue for the substantive representation of women (e.g., Bird 2005; deVet and Devroe 2023) and examined the propensity of women and men MPs to ask such questions as a tool of parliamentary oversight (Akirav 2020; Kroeber and Krauss 2023). While considerable attention has been paid to who asks parliamentary questions, less attention has been given to the ministers who receive parliamentary questions. Analysing the patterns of question receipt is important, as it offers insights into the dynamics of political accountability and the gendered distribution of parliamentary scrutiny. To fill this gap, this paper examines parliamentary questions directed to ministers in New Zealand during the 52nd legislative period (2017- 2020), with a particular focus on how gender, parliamentary and ministerial seniority, and ministerial portfolio shape these interactions. Drawing on an original dataset that includes all questions posed to ministers during the 52nd New Zealand legislative period, we analyse both the volume and distribution of questions. The dataset combines minister-level gender, parliamentary and ministerial seniority, and ministerial portfolio, as well as ministers’ socio-demographic characteristics such as migrant background and age, and party affiliation. Our analysis first maps the overall landscape of questioning across ministers, gender, seniority and portfolios. We then model the relationship between the number of questions ministers receive and their individual attributes, while also accounting for who asks the questions—opposition or government MPs, men or women members of parliament, and party affiliation. This approach allows us to identify whether gendered patterns emerge in both the direction and nature of parliamentary questioning. By investigating how gender shapes everyday parliamentary interactions, our study offeres new empirical evidence on the gendered dynamics of attention, power, and accountability in contemporary executive politics.