Inviting More Women to the Party: Gender Quotas and Women's Substantive Representation in Germany

Four of the five major political parties in Germany have voluntarily adopted gender quotas of some kind, and these quotas have assisted in increasing the number of women in the Bundestag to nearly one-third of its membership. While their impact on women's descriptive representation (the presence of women in elected decision-making roles) is relatively clear, research is needed to assess whether this descriptive representation in fact links to women's substantive representation (attention to women's interests in debate and in legislation). Through a content analysis of Bundestag plenary debates discussing laws sponsored or cosponsored by the Committee on Families, Seniors, Women, and Children, this study hypothesizes and tests several ways in which women legislators may be more likely than men to draw attention to women constituents and their interests. Using individual-level data, the study concentrates on gender and the implementation of a gender quota in any individual speaker's party as explanatory variables, and it incorporates indicators of both feminist and traditional notions of women's issues as response variables. Results of statistical analyses indicate that women do speak more frequently and more substantively in this set of debates, and it appears that the presence of a gender quota independently enhances attention to these issues.