TY - JOUR

T1 - Party Gate-Keeping and Women’s Appointment to Parliamentary Committees

T2 - Evidence from the Italian Case

AU - Pansardi, Pamela

AU - Vercesi, Michelangelo

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Hansard Society; all rights reserved.

PY - 2017/1/23

Y1 - 2017/1/23

N2 - In this article, we investigate whether and how political parties function as gatekeepers in determining gender differentiations in committee appointments by using the Italian parliamentary committee system from 1994 to 2013 as a case study. Committee membership provides individual MPs with direct influence in a specific policy area as well as with visibility and expertise, thus affecting MPs' political careers. Accordingly, to study women's appointments to committees' positions is eventually to say something about women's chances to have an actual effect in the political process. After presenting the theoretical framework, three hypotheses are proposed. Our findings show that women tend to be appointed to committees dealing with stereotypically 'feminine' and 'less prestigious' issues, and that left-wing parties reproduce this pattern less than right-wing parties, but not when it comes to the appointment to more prestigious and influential positions. Moreover, we found that no significant longitudinal trends towards more unbiased distributions can be detected. A discussion closes the article.

AB - In this article, we investigate whether and how political parties function as gatekeepers in determining gender differentiations in committee appointments by using the Italian parliamentary committee system from 1994 to 2013 as a case study. Committee membership provides individual MPs with direct influence in a specific policy area as well as with visibility and expertise, thus affecting MPs' political careers. Accordingly, to study women's appointments to committees' positions is eventually to say something about women's chances to have an actual effect in the political process. After presenting the theoretical framework, three hypotheses are proposed. Our findings show that women tend to be appointed to committees dealing with stereotypically 'feminine' and 'less prestigious' issues, and that left-wing parties reproduce this pattern less than right-wing parties, but not when it comes to the appointment to more prestigious and influential positions. Moreover, we found that no significant longitudinal trends towards more unbiased distributions can be detected. A discussion closes the article.

KW - Politics

KW - Italian parliament

KW - Parliamentary appointments

KW - Parliamentary committees

KW - Party gate-keeping

KW - Women and politics

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85014048333&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1093/pa/gsv066

DO - 10.1093/pa/gsv066

M3 - Journal articles

VL - 70

SP - 62

EP - 83

JO - Parliamentary Affairs

JF - Parliamentary Affairs

SN - 0031-2290

IS - 1

ER -