Effective representation of women legislators in parliaments: a case study of New Zealand in theoretical and global perspectives

Barriers to women's effective representation are examined along two main dimensions. Firstly, barriers are identified that hinder women's legislative participation and secondly, barriers are identified against women's effective representation. Effectiveness is the ability to exercise power to make an impact. But the sources of power that leads to effectiveness may sometimes remain inadequately accessible to women. Barriers to participation and barriers to effectiveness are interrelated. Broadly barriers can be classified as societal, institutional and structural. However, women legislators of some countries are quite successful in overcoming those barriers. A number of hypotheses regarding barriers, effective parliamentary representation, conducive systems and strategies are tested through this empirical research. Representation itself is a contested principle of political science. Women's political representation is even more controversial. Legislative representatives are expected to serve primarily their political parties. But the expectation that women legislators should be the representatives of women as a group contradicts other theories of political representation. While some women legislators follow this guideline of representing women by focusing only on certain issues, their activities are often seen as stereotypical and their effectiveness is questioned. This limits women legislators' ability to fulfil their other representative roles such as political parties, constituencies and the whole nation. New Zealand was selected as a case study to assess women legislators' effectiveness as representatives. This is analysed in terms of four indicators: cabinet positions, select committee assignments, speaking ability, and overall reputation. Event and reputational, two types of indicators of power, have been used to assess power and effectiveness . Cabinet positions and committee assignments seem countable and event-based but lobbying and speaking are more susceptible to reputational indicators. The individual legislator cannot be assessed easily on an event-based assessment because most of the legislative outcomes are group decisions. Therefore, along with event, the reputational approach has been used to supplement the understanding of effectiveness. Primary research was conducted in two different formats, namely, a mail questionnaire for male MPs, and personal interviews for female MPs. Out of 37 women MPs 22 were interviewed and out of 40 targeted male MPs 34 responded to the study. A brief comparison of the findings of the New Zealand case was undertaken with two other countries, Norway and Bangladesh. The comparison was designed based on contemporary literature that proposes that both barriers to participation and barriers to effectiveness vary from culture to culture. This case study of New Zealand women MPs' effective participation and representation reveals that women legislators are effective in performing selective legislative tasks such as gaining cabinet positions and select committee assignments. Their speaking ability and overall good reputation are also noteworthy. Although some trace of stereotypes is evident in taking social welfare tasks by women legislators, a majority of them are not confined to any such areas. The study concludes that the representation of party is the legislators' prime task whether male or female and that by using the party platform, women can be effective both as legislative and women's representatives.