Gendering Gamson's Law
Faculty Advisor Name
Dr. John Scherpereel
Department
Department of Political Science
Description
This project devised by Dr. John Scherpereel and Dr. Melinda Adams uses the concept of Gamson's law to discuss trends in female representation in parliaments and cabinets globally. While data suggests that in general women's representation is on an upward trajectory, it does not account for differences along party lines, and thus representation in cabinets. It is this party representation, though, that determines the number of women present in a cabinet.
In terms of legislative representation, women's representation is characterized by a process of "ratcheting." This is the process whereby once representation of women rises in a parliament, it tends not to drop, it either holds steady or continues to rise. Cabinet representation of women, on the other hand, is characterized by "see-sawing." See-sawing is the process whereby the gains made in one session may backslide in the following session.
We propose in this project that that the gender composition of a governing coalition’s parliamentary delegation may affect the gender composition of the cabinet that coalition parties construct. Thus, we believe that it is the consistently changing compositions of governing coalitions that causes this "see-sawing" representation of women in cabinets that we see demonstrated in current data.
We base this thought in a classical political science theory that was first posited in 1961 by Gamson. Known as Gamson’s Law, this theory suggests that "parliamentary math will be mirrored in cabinet math." Essentially, the percentage of the parliament that a party makes up will also be the percentage of the cabinet that that party makes up. We have taken this theory a step further with this project, suggesting then that the percentage of a party present in a parliament that is composed of women will have an effect on the percentage of the cabinet that is also composed of women. Thus, as the governing coalition changes or the percentage of a party composed of women changes, so does the percentage of women in the cabinet.
To carry out this project, we collected initial parliamentary and cabinet data for 19 OECD countries from 1990-present and coded each member by party and gender and are continuing to perform data analysis of our collection. Current analysis of the data suggests a positive correlation between the share of cabinet seats received by women participating in a governing coalition and the share of legislative seats held by legislators from members of the governing parties, thus supporting our hypothesis.
Gendering Gamson's Law
This project devised by Dr. John Scherpereel and Dr. Melinda Adams uses the concept of Gamson's law to discuss trends in female representation in parliaments and cabinets globally. While data suggests that in general women's representation is on an upward trajectory, it does not account for differences along party lines, and thus representation in cabinets. It is this party representation, though, that determines the number of women present in a cabinet.
In terms of legislative representation, women's representation is characterized by a process of "ratcheting." This is the process whereby once representation of women rises in a parliament, it tends not to drop, it either holds steady or continues to rise. Cabinet representation of women, on the other hand, is characterized by "see-sawing." See-sawing is the process whereby the gains made in one session may backslide in the following session.
We propose in this project that that the gender composition of a governing coalition’s parliamentary delegation may affect the gender composition of the cabinet that coalition parties construct. Thus, we believe that it is the consistently changing compositions of governing coalitions that causes this "see-sawing" representation of women in cabinets that we see demonstrated in current data.
We base this thought in a classical political science theory that was first posited in 1961 by Gamson. Known as Gamson’s Law, this theory suggests that "parliamentary math will be mirrored in cabinet math." Essentially, the percentage of the parliament that a party makes up will also be the percentage of the cabinet that that party makes up. We have taken this theory a step further with this project, suggesting then that the percentage of a party present in a parliament that is composed of women will have an effect on the percentage of the cabinet that is also composed of women. Thus, as the governing coalition changes or the percentage of a party composed of women changes, so does the percentage of women in the cabinet.
To carry out this project, we collected initial parliamentary and cabinet data for 19 OECD countries from 1990-present and coded each member by party and gender and are continuing to perform data analysis of our collection. Current analysis of the data suggests a positive correlation between the share of cabinet seats received by women participating in a governing coalition and the share of legislative seats held by legislators from members of the governing parties, thus supporting our hypothesis.
