Female Chief Executives, Parliamentary Discourse & Substantive Representation

• In Event: Who Speaks for Whom? Gender, Ethnicity, Partisanship & Legislative Discourse

Abstract

This paper asks whether women and girls’ substantive needs are discussed more in parliamentary discourse under a female chief executive than a male, and if so, who is doing the talking and what are they saying? Qualitative investigation of the 4th New Zealand National government under Prime Minsters Jim Bolger and Jenny Shipley found that that the female chief executive spoke more about women’s needs than her male counterpart, and that the former’s male ministers spoke up on behalf of women more often than they did under her male predecessor. Women in the opposition also became more vocal about women’s needs under Shipley than under Bolger. This paper tests the external validity of the New Zealand findings in the German state legislative context, using machine text analysis of parliamentary discourse under paired sets of Länder, governed by a male and a female “Ministerpraesident” during the same legislative session.

Author

• Louise K. Davidson-Schmich, University of Miami