What Women Represent : The Impact of Women in Parliament / Erica Rayment.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Rayment, Erica, Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women politicians--Canada.

Women politicians.

Women--Political activity--Canada.

Women.

Physical Description:

1 online resource : 13 diagrams, 11 tables

Place of Publication:

Montreal ; Kingston ; London ; Chicago : McGill-Queen's University Press, [2024]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Political equity advocates and academics often argue that we must elect more women, but what difference does it make if we do? What Women Represent shows that women can and do influence the issues raised and the decisions made in parliamentary debate and decision-making.Using a new framework for thinking about what it means for legislators to represent women and drawing on a database that encompasses five decades of debate in the House of Commons, Erica Rayment investigates which members of Parliament represent women and what issues they address. She then examines the role women parliamentarians played in two instances where governments threatened to curtail previous gender equality gains: the Mulroney government’s attempted recriminalization of abortion and the Harper government’s plans to cut funding and weaken the mandate of Status of Women Canada. Rayment’s analysis decisively shows that parliamentary presence matters for the representation of women’s interests; women MPs, regardless of party, are more likely to act for women and play a critical role when the rights of women are at stake.What Women Represent is the first large-scale analysis of the substantive representation of women in Canadian politics, adding depth and nuance to our understanding of issues of gender in parliamentary institutions.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Tables and Figures

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1 Explaining the Impact of Elected Women

2 Gender, Party, and Parliamentary Speeches about Women

3 Policy Issues in Parliamentary Speeches about Women

4 Connecting Parliamentary Speeches and Policy Action

5 The Mulroney Government and the Recriminalization of Abortion

6 The Harper Government and Cuts to Status of Women Canada

Conclusion

Appendix 1 Comparison of Measures of Speeches about Women

Appendix 2 Unsupervised Topic Model Selection

Notes

References

Index Page numbers followed by (t) and (f) indicate references to tables and figures. Abella, Rosalie,

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 02. Jun 2024)

ISBN:

0-2280-2096-4