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Needles in a Haystack: The Descriptive, Constitutive, and Substantive Representation of Racially Minoritized Women

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Orly Siow

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This is the authors' accepted manuscript of an article that has been published in its final definitive form by Bristol University Press, 2023.

For re-use rights please refer to the publisher's terms and conditions.


Abstract

Using a dataset of 1.1 million speeches drawn from UK House of Commons debates 1997-2017 and a combination of automated and manual content analysis, this study addresses three interrelated questions. Firstly, to what extent are minoritized women constitutively represented in parliamentary debates? Secondly, which MPs do so? Thirdly, how do MPs’ race and gender affect how they represent minoritized women? I find that minorized women are mentioned exceptionally rarely in parliamentary debates. Furthermore, descriptive representatives are not only substantially more likely to mention minoritized women than other MPs, but they also improve the quality of representation by doing so in relation to a wider range of issues. Yet, paradoxically, white men’s descriptive over representation means that they account for the vast majority of mentions of minoritized women. More broadly, I foreground the distinction between constitutive and substantive representation, highlighting the importance of distinguishing between speaking about and on behalf of.


Publication metadata

Author(s): Siow O

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: European Journal of Politics & Gender

Year: 2023

Pages: epub ahead of print

Online publication date: 24/02/2023

Acceptance date: 13/01/2023

Date deposited: 17/01/2023

ISSN (print): 2515-1088

ISSN (electronic): 2515-1096

Publisher: Bristol University Press

URL: https://doi.org/10.1332/251510821X16739744241737

DOI: 10.1332/251510821X16739744241737

ePrints DOI: 10.57711/ewxq-gz60


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