Early birds, short tenures, and the double squeeze: How gender and age intersect with parliamentary representation

• Main Authors: JOSHI, Devin K., OCH, Malliga
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2019
• Subjects: Age; gender; legislatures; parliament; representation; women; Gender and Sexuality; Political Science
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/3084; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soss_research/article/4341/viewcontent/EarlyBirds_av.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

The gender and age composition of a parliament impacts who is descriptively represented and marginalized and what types of policy ideas and solutions are brought forward or excluded. While important for both descriptive and substantive representation, scholarship on the intersection of gender and age in parliaments has thus far been limited. To broaden our understanding, we conducted a large-scale cross-sectional analysis of the gender and ages of over 20,000 representatives from 78 national assemblies. We identified four types of gender-age patterns depending on whether women enter legislatures younger than men (“early birds”) or have served in parliament for a shorter period of time than men (“short tenures”). Most surprisingly, we found few countries exhibit the predicted “double squeeze” pattern whereby women enter parliament older than men and have shorter tenures. Lastly, since most women enter parliament after child-bearing age, we conclude that the motherhood penalty still exists.