Why Do Women Represent Women? Intrinsic Mechanisms and Political Context

Research on women’s political representation has long debated whether descriptive representation translates into substantive representation. While prior scholarship suggests that women’s presence in political institutions can matter for advancing women’s interests, the mechanisms underlying this relationship remain insufficiently specified. This paper contributes to the literature by explicitly theorizing and empirically testing mechanisms that link descriptive to substantive representation of women. Building on work on minority representation by Sobolewska, McKee and Campbell (2018), we identify two intrinsic mechanism and one extrinsic mechanism. The first intrinsic mechanism is perceived shared experience, whereby women representatives recognize common experiences of prejudice and discrimination with women voters. The second intrinsic mechanism is motivation to represent, defined as a self-reported sense of responsibility to incorporate women’s perspectives into political decision-making. The extrinsic mechanism concerns electoral incentives, captured by the share of women in political office, which may either strengthen or weaken intrinsic motivations. The analyses draw on survey data from a panel of elected local councillors in Finland (n = 680) collected in 2024. We estimate mixed-effects linear regression models with random intercepts at the municipal level and cluster-robust standard errors to examine how gender shapes these intrinsic mechanisms and how party affiliation and the local level of women’s descriptive representation condition them. Finland provides a particularly informative context due to its generally high, yet locally varying, levels of women’s representation. The results provide clear support for the proposed intrinsic mechanisms: women councillors are significantly more likely than men to perceive shared gendered experiences and to report a motivation to represent women’s interests. These effects are moderated by party affiliation. While women in all parties are more intrinsically motivated to represent women than men, this pattern is particularly strong in left-wing parties. We also find evidence for an extrinsic mechanism: while women councillors report a stronger motivation to represent women than men, this gender gap diminishes in councils where women form a majority. Together, these findings demonstrate that intrinsic motivations are gendered and shaped by broader political and institutional contexts. Our study highlights the importance of representatives’ own role understandings in linking descriptive and substantive representation of women.