Parliamentary Stayers in Western Democracies: Mind the Gender-Gap in Political Endurance.
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This Tuesday we have two presenters, one joining us physically and one virtually: Torill Stavenes, postdoctoral fellow at Department of Government, and Ragnhild Muriaas, professor at the Department of Government. Both from the ERC-project SUCCESS, where Muriaas is PI.
The event is in a hybrid format, you are welcome to join us for lunch from the Corner room at DIGSSCORE. Food is provided on a first-come first-served basis.
The talk is titled "Parliamentary Stayers in Western Democracies: Mind the Gender-Gap in Political Endurance". Abstract for the talk:
Seniority profoundly influences parliamentarians’ political behavior. Research has found that newcomers in National Assemblies are less likely to play a dominant role in policymaking and to be appointed to prestigious positions. This indicates that if there are gender gaps in political endurance—with men more likely than women to be a political stayer—women are not just disadvantaged in getting elected but in getting their job done as representatives. How large are gender gaps in political endurance in western democracies and have the recent increase in women’s representation narrowed the gap? To answer these questions, we make use of a dataset of 11 western democracies and construct a new measure—the Gender Gap in Endurance—that shows the gendered composition of parliaments based on who have stayed for three terms or more in office. This measurement shows that there was - and still is - a gender gap in political endurance in Western Democracies, but that the size of the gap decreases over time due to increased volatility and more female MPs.
All are welcome!