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Proportional Representation and Female Parliamentarians
Author(s) -
SALMOND ROB
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
legislative studies quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.728
H-Index - 54
eISSN - 1939-9162
pISSN - 0362-9805
DOI - 10.3162/036298006x201779
Subject(s) - parliament , representation (politics) , proportional representation , electoral system , space (punctuation) , work (physics) , political science , positive economics , sociology , computer science , law , economics , politics , mechanical engineering , democracy , engineering , operating system
This article asks, “What effect does the choice of a nation's electoral system have on the gender composition of its parliament over time?” I find that the electoral system has an important part to play, but previous work has overstated, by factors of between two and three, how much of a difference an electoral system can make. This article contributes an updated nonlinear theory of female representation, an improved dataset on women's representation across space and time, and more modern statistical techniques than previously used in research on this question.