Women’s Representation or Masculine Nations: Political Culture and Gendered Parliaments

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Abstract

There has been a shortage of research on femininities and masculinities in comparative politics of gender studies. The following uses a quantitative comparison approach to study how nations cultural dimension of feminine “care” and masculine “competitiveness” influences the gendered politics of women’s descriptive representation. Its sample covers women’s representation in 194 political parties within the parliaments of 30 OECD nations. The feminine left- and masculine right- political party binary is incorporated into this study as a key link between nations gendered political culture and women’s descriptive representation. This study shows that parties infuse nations gender culture into politics in ways that are significant for women’s descriptive representation. This paper’s quantitative findings support the theory of hegemonic masculinity. It shows that the less feminine “caring” and the more masculine “competitive” a nation’s culture likely decreases its descriptive representation of women and the parties that support them in parliament.

Author

• Patrick Aaron Levine, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign