Who Represents Men in Britain? A Network Analytical Approach to Men’s Representation in Politics

Nearly all scholarship on substantive representation focuses on the capacity of parliaments to represent the interests of minority (and minoritised) groups. We flip this question and consider the representation of men - a group that enjoys numerical dominance in almost all aspects of political power. We are curious to see which men are represented politically (recognising that not all men have equal access to political power), how, and by whom. In this paper, we focus primarily on the latter question to explore who is making representative claims on behalf of men. Following Saward (2006, 2010), we look both at actors making representative claims on behalf of men both within and beyond parliament. Focusing on the British case study, we use network analysis to identify the linkages between these actors. Additionally, and crucially, we establish which groups and agendas remain marginalised within formal politics. Our data is derived from in-depth analysis of committee and other documentation from the UK parliament that pertains to policies that explicitly reference men’s gendered interests. This process has identified critical actors speaking on behalf of men within parliament, alongside the non-governmental organisations and individual experts who have given evidence to parliamentary committees. To deepen our understanding of the networks between these actors, and to understand why some NGOs who campaign on behalf of men have not been involved in formal policy-making arenas, we conduct a series of semi-structured interviews with actors. We use a purposive sample, enhanced with a snowballing approach, to draw as granular a network as possible. Our initial findings indicate that actors who speak on behalf of men are largely separated by policy context, but within these contexts there is widespread connection between parliamentary and non-parliamentary actors. We also identify a small, but devoted, group of parliamentarians who are actively making representative claims on behalf of men across multiple policy contexts. There are also notable absences in the political discourse in terms of which men (BAME, LGBTQ+, etc.) are being represented, and who makes claims on men’s behalf. Our intersectional, gendered approach to men’s representation offers a novel and important contribution to studies of substantive representation.