Abstract
Ethnic minority women tend to be better represented in parliaments than ethnic minority men. What does this mean for their substantive representation? This article makes use of intersectional analysis to study how the relationship between descriptive and substantive representation differs within and between gender and ethnic groups. Drawing on written parliamentary questions and the committee memberships of MPs in seven parliamentary sessions (1995–2012) in the Netherlands, a strong link is found between descriptive and substantive representation. Female ethnic minority MPs more often sit on committees and table questions that address ethnic minority women’s interests than male ethnic minority and female ethnic majority MPs. The link, however, is fragile as it is based on a small number of active MPs. This demonstrates the importance of an intersectional approach to understanding how representation works in increasingly diverse parliaments, which cannot be captured by focusing on gender or ethnicity alone.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 705-727 |
| Number of pages | 23 |
| Journal | West European Politics |
| Volume | 42 |
| Issue number | 4 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 7 Jun 2019 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Funding
Results presented in this article have been largely obtained within the project ‘Pathways to Power: The Political Representation of Citizens of Immigrant Origin in Seven European Democracies (PATHWAYS)’. This project was funded by the ANR (France), DFG (Germany), ESRC (United Kingdom) and NWO (Netherlands) under the Open Research Area (ORA+) framework. The PATHWAYS consortium is formed by the University of Amsterdam (Jean Tillie), the University of Bamberg (Thomas Saalfeld), the University of Leicester (Laura Morales), and the CEVIPOF-Sciences Po Paris (Manlio Cinalli). We thank Anne-Sophie van Gulpen, Huub Ramler and Mehri Zamanbin for their research assistance. The complete set of written questions for the lower house of the Dutch parliament (Tweede Kamer) were downloaded from officielebekendmakingen.nl with a script provided by Carsten Schwemmer, which was updated by Mats Willemsen and Erik de Vries; Takeo David Hymans edited the manuscript. This work is supported by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) – Open Research Area (ORA) Grant [Grant number 464-13-055, Principal Investigator Jean Tillie]. Liza Mu€gge’s research is supported by a NWO-VIDI grant [Grant number 016.Vidi.175.355], Daphne van der Pas’ research is supported by an NWO-VENI grant [Grant number: 451-17-025] and Marc van de Wardt’s research is supported by a postdoctoral research grant from the Research Foundation Flanders [Grant number FWO16/PDO/198].
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| NWO-VENI | 451-17-025 |
| NWO-VIDI | 016 |
| PATHWAYS | |
| Political Representation of Citizens of Immigrant Origin in Seven European Democracies | |
| University of Bamberg | |
| Economic and Social Research Council | |
| University of Leicester | |
| Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft | |
| Agence Nationale de la Recherche | |
| Universiteit van Amsterdam | |
| Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek | FWO16/PDO/198 |
| Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek | 464-13-055 |
Keywords
- descriptive representation
- Intersectionality
- minorities
- parliamentary questions
- substantive representation