Same-Gender Substantive Representation: Legislative Actions and Responsiveness

• In Event: Service Delivery in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

The rise in female officeholders worldwide has galvanized hope that they will substantively represent female citizens' policy priorities, but theory and evidence are mixed. Leveraging a rich dataset, we investigate whether politicians better substantively represent same-gender citizens' policy priorities across 50 subnational Ugandan legislatures (where one-third of seats are reserved for women). While male politicians perform significantly more legislative actions in roads/transport (male citizens' priority), reserved-seat women politicians (RSWs) perform significantly less legislative actions in water (female citizens' priority). We examine multiple explanations. We rule out biased committee assignments. We further rule out unconscious gender bias in accountability pressure through an experiment - politicians are no more likely to prioritize service delivery priorities voiced by a male versus female citizen. Our leading explanation is that male politicians' personal policy priorities are more congruent with same-gender citizens, and female citizens' policy priority is more difficult to serve.

Authors

• Kristin Grace Michelitch, Vanderbilt University

• Sangeun Cecilia Kim, Vanderbilt University