What Women Represent: The Impact of Women in Parliament

Date: Friday, March 14
Time: 12 noon
Location: Edwards School of Business Room 12, 25 Campus Dr., Saskatoon

Free and open to the public

About this event

What difference does it make if we elect more women? I argue that despite institutional constraints, women MPs can and do influence the issues raised and the decisions made in parliamentary debate and decision-making. Drawing on a dataset of nearly five decades of parliamentary debate transcripts I use machine-learning techniques to identify which members of parliament represent women in parliamentary debate and what issues they address. Using the large-scale analysis as the basis for case selection, I examine two instances where governments threatened to curtail previous gender equality gains: the Mulroney government’s attempt to recriminalize abortion and the Harper government’s plans to cut funding and weaken the mandate of Status of Women Canada. The results show that women MPs, regardless of party, are more likely to speak and act for women and play a critical role when the rights of women are at stake.

Erica Rayment is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Calgary. She holds a PhD in political science from the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on Canadian parliamentary institutions and women’s political representation.

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