Legislative Role Models
Female Cabinet Ministers and Parliamentary Debate
When women are promoted to high office, do they serve as role models to other women in politics? I evaluate a female role-model hypothesis by examining parliamentary debates in the UK House of Commons. In the context of a difference-in-differences design which makes use of over-time variation in the gender of cabinet ministers, I demonstrate that female ministers increase the participation of other female MPs in relevant debates by approximately one quarter, compared to when the minister is male. Further, using a measure of debate influence based on the degree to which words used by one legislator are adopted by other members, I show that female ministers also increase the influence of female backbenchers. To explore the mechanisms behind these results, I introduce a new metric of ministerial responsiveness and show that female ministers are significantly more responsive to the speeches of female backbenchers than are male ministers.
All external research linked on this page give the views of the author(s), and not the position of mySociety
Related Items:
-
Measuring Emotion in Parliamentary Debates with Automated Textual Analysis
December 2016
-
Beyond Transparency
March 2025
Research newsletter
Sign up to our mailing list for updates about new publications and events.