Women's Representation in the French Senate

Calls to increase women’s parliamentary representation are often based on the expectation that female legislators will govern differently from male legislators. That is, we expect that descriptive representation will lead to substantive representation. Research has found support for this hypothesis, especially in the American context. The connection between descriptive and substantive representation has been more difficult to assess in Europe due to parliamentary government, because party discipline means that both male and female legislators tend to vote along party lines.

This paper extends the study of the relationship between descriptive and substantive representation to a European democracy, France, which since the 2001 parity law has seen a dramatic increase in female representation. Using an original rollcall dataset of the French Senate from 1996 to 2017, we explore the degree to which this shift has led to changes in substantive representation. In contrast to many other parliamentary systems, institutional features of the French political system weaken party discipline, making it an excellent case for exploring these questions. For example, France permits intra-party competition in candidate selection; moreover, the Senate cannot be dissolved by the President or by votes-of-no-confidence, which should provide senators with more independence vis-a-vis their respective parties. Both of these features of the French Senate validate the use of rollcall voting to investigate the relationship between descriptive and substantive representation, as such votes are more likely to represent the individual preferences of senators and not merely the "party line".