How Women Win Over Political Peers

• In Event: Emotions, Fashion, and Redefining Politics

Abstract

How do female politicians convince their male colleagues to take them seriously? Much of the previous work on women in politics focuses on the relationship between female politicians and voters, not female politicians and their influential colleagues. However, political elites play an important role in determining how many and which female politicians are elected. I argue in order to prove women belong in the legislature, female politicians demonstrate competency by questioning policy. As women are motivated by the desire to demonstrate competency, given the option between privately addressing a government minister or speaking in front of their peers, women choose the latter. I support my argument by analyzing the rate of questioning policy of male and female members of the Moroccan parliament. The data comes from an original data set, collected from the question records of Morocco’s lower house of parliament from 2011-2018. I find that women do question policy at a greater rate than men and prioritize public speaking over written questions. Although the gap in questioning rates decreases overtime, this is due to men asking significantly more questions, not women asking fewer. This paper offers the first politician-level analysis of gendered behavior in authoritarian regimes.

Author

• MaryClare Roche, Princeton University