Are female legislators sitting at the right tables?
An empirical study of the effect of gender on issue specialization in
Finland
Bachelor project “Parliaments and parliamentary decision-making”
Rhea Creutzburg
Student number: 2018322 Bachelor Political Science
Instructor and first examiner: Dr. Tim A. Mickler Second examiner: Dr. Nikoleta Yordanova Date: 2020-12-18
Index Introduction ... 3 Legislative organization ... 4 Committee specialization ... 5 Gendered specialization ... 7 Research design ... 9 Data ... 10 Results ... 13 Conclusion ... 17 Bibliography ... 21 Appendix ... 25
Introduction
Parliaments are the main institutions in which elected representatives are expected to fulfill their task of representing the citizens of society. The relationship between parliaments and citizens is a difficult one, with a lot of societal disagreement about the way parliaments should perform their functions. There is however a broad consensus that parliaments should descriptively mirror the society’s diversity. “‘Unrepresentative political’ institutions are considered to be unjust, to lack legitimacy, to reveal a democratic deficit and to reduce the substantive representation of excluded groups” (Childs & Cowley, 2011, p. 1). In practice, many parliaments do not live up to this expectation. Often, they show a disproportional descriptive representation of women compared to society. With exceptions in Rwanda, Cuba, Bolivia and the United Arab Emirates, all other representative democracies have less than 50% of elected seats delegated to women (Inter-Parliamentary Union, 2020). “Women's under-representation in politics is in one sense just empirical fact: they are not present in elected assemblies in the same proportions as they are present in the electorate” (Phillips, 1994, p. 65). Descriptive representation, which can be understood as ‘the compositional similarity between representatives and the represented’ seems to matter (Schwindt-bayer & Mishler, 2010, p. 407). One important argument is that it enhances the inherent representation of the members of society, which is called the substantive representation (Celis, 2007). It is stated that female politicians are best fit to represent women’s interests, since they share other women’s experiences. Female legislators are believed to contribute to a strengthened position of women’s interests (Phillips, 1994; Wängnerud, 2009). On a more practical note, is suggested that a greater share of seats held by women contributes to more introduced women’s rights bills (Htun, Lacalle, & Micozzi, 2013; Schwindt-bayer & Mishler, 2010).
A preference for a better descriptive representation of women also prevails among citizens. They desire a higher number of female politicians in legislatures, mainly because of the belief that an absence of women in political power is a threat to democracy (Espírito-Santo, 2016). To see both men and women actively working in political institutions creates a perception of a high quality democracy. Hence, the scholarly assumptions and the societal perspectives imply that a descriptive underrepresentation of women in parliaments must be considered a political and societal problem.
Over the last century, the number of women in parliaments has increased, mostly as a result of institutional rules such as quota (Krook, 2008; Schwindt-Bayer, 2009). However, acquiring actual political power and political prestige within the parliament is another step. After the elections, legislators settle into the chamber and take up their obtained seat. This,
however, is not the final stage of legislative organization. Legislative decision-making requires parliaments to organize themselves in some sort of structural way. One important strategy of organization is specializing into certain issues to minimize policy deficiencies and maximize expertise and legislative oversight (Asher, 1974; Grant, 1973). This seems to be the next struggle for female legislators. Observations show patterns of women being underrepresented in certain specializations, such as in parliamentary committees (Sawer, 2000). ‘Entering parliaments in substantial numbers means that women increasingly have taken “a place at the table”, but it might be that they are not sitting at the tables (…) where the most important political decisions are made’ (Baekgaard & Kjaer, 2012, p. 466). These specialized legislative areas are increasingly important, because this is where the application of specialized knowledge and expertise takes place which is required for complex decision making (Hamm, Hedlund, & Post, 2011). In certain prestige policy issue areas, such as finance and defense, women are less likely than men to acquire a seat (Murray & Sénac, 2018). They are however found serving more on health and welfare policy issues.
It seems that after the electoral composition of the chamber, legislators differentiate. This leaves us with an empirical gap of the relation between gender and political power, and the effects of gender on specialized policy making. The puzzle has shifted from women’s underrepresentation within the legislative chamber to women’s underrepresentation within legislative specializations, a political context of which only little is known nowadays (Coffé, Bolzendahl, & Schnellecke, 2019). To the broaden the knowledge of gender parity within these legislative organizations, it is important that further research investigates the factors that could explain a skewed representation in certain areas. This thesis aims to answer why legislators differ in the way they specialize to certain policy issues. Rival explanatory factors, such as expertise, seniority and gender are investigated. The results contribute to a broader understanding of legislative organization and specialization.
Legislative organization
Legislatures are instituted with a purpose, they are ‘the principle policy-making institutions in modern democracies’, where the most important policy decisions are being taken (Carey, 2009). In doing this, parliaments possess a set of responsibilities. These include representing the diverse society, deliberating, cultivating information and expertise, acting in a decisive manner and checking the majority and executive branch of government. There are various theories on how legislatures organize themselves to maximize the efficiency of law-making.
A norm of legislative behavior is specialization (Asher, 1974). Specialization is a phenomenon on both national and state level, that contributes to informed decision-making on a wide range of issues. This is necessary, since it is impossible for a legislator to gather information on all specializations. An individual will take on a special interest and mobilize the important information within this area. This specialized legislator informs and advices its non-specialized colleagues. To find out why legislators specialize to issues, the focus must be drawn on their personal goals and backgrounds and the electoral context.
Committee specialization
A central focus of attention within the political literature is on committee and subcommittee specialization as a part of legislative organization. Specialization within committee systems is studied widely because it is considered an important legislative strategy that contributes to knowledge discovery (Asher, 1974; Baron, 2000; Hamm et al., 2011). Parliamentary committees are considered privileged areas where distinctive expertise is performed. Members of a committee have the right and duty to work on issues of a certain interest, which creates opportunities for political power (Mickler, 2018a).
Theories on committee specialization are developed with a congressional focus, but they are also applicable to committee processes outside of the US (Mickler, 2018b; Yordanova, 2009). These congressional developed theories explain why legislators specialize within decision-making bodies. The first theory, the distributive theory, assumes that political candidates come to parliament with a purpose. They will try to exchange and trade votes within parliament to fulfill their personal agenda. According to this argument, specialized committees are installed to serve the individual purposes of MP’s. ‘Legislators could be partitioned into groups, and the categories and groups paired up in a manner that enabled legislators who most cared about some specific policy to be members of the appropriate group’ (Shepsle & Weingast, 1994, p. 155). This often serves legislators who wish to be re-elected, and thus seek benefits relevant for their constituents. Hence, according to this rationale, committee assignments are driven by these specific interests of MP’s (Hamm et al., 2011).
A different rationale is the informational theory. This one assumes that committees are established to minimize uncertainty within the legislative process. Since legislators are not able to specialize on all areas, legislative committees help to provide relevant information for certain issues. Legislators get assigned to committees based on their level of expertise and knowledge within this area of jurisdiction. This knowledge advantage is due to prior educational or
occupational experience in the relevant field (Gilligan & Krehbiel, 1987). For example, a former lawyer would serve on the Judicial Committee, because it is rational to fully utilize this MP’s information and expertise. Bowler & Farrell (1995) add to this by claiming that experience as a politician is also an important factor for committee seat distribution. They claim that the length of tenure, and the number of previous offices held -and with that the level of political experience of an MP- have a positive effect on specialization to powerful committees. The third rationale assumes that parties and party leadership play a significant role in the distribution of MP’s to committees. Certain committees are important for electoral successes of a political party, so based on this the party decides who gets allocated where. Parliamentary party groups then act as a structuring hand (Coombs, Martorano, & Hamm, 2009). Literature shows that MP's who are considered 'loyalists' within the party are more likely to transfer to a committee, and also more likely to get a better assignment (Cox & McCubbins, 2007).
Hamm (2011) tested the informational theory in the US Congress by analyzing the values of legislators’ prior knowledge, experience and expertise based on their occupations, and their familiarity of policy issue due to prior committee service. The results show that members with prior knowledge, experience and expertise are overrepresented in committees of that policy domain, confirming the assumptions of the informational theory. These are however stronger for Legal and Agricultural committees than for Education and Labor committees. Empirical results in the Netherlands also show that prior education and occupation have a significantly strong effect on the specializations of MP’s. Additionally, prior committee experience seems to play a significant role for the composition process. A study of the committee assignments of MEP’s also confirms that prior experience and expertise matter (McElroy, 2006). There is, however little evidence for strong partisan influence in European cases (McElroy, 2006; Yordanova, 2009; Mickler, 2018a, 2019).
Following these congressional theories, it is expected that educational and occupational background influences the committee specialization process. I will focus on a pattern of discrepancy in specializations to certain ‘soft’ issues committees or a ‘hard’ issues committees. So for example, I expect that a relevant education or occupation within a soft issue area leads to MP’s specializing in this soft policy issue area. This induces my first hypotheses:
H1: MP’s with a relevant educational or occupational background in soft issues are more likely to get specialize to soft issues.
H2: MP’s with a relevant educational or occupational background in hard issues are more likely to specialize to hard issues.
Empirical evidence for the effects of seniority on the possibilities to get assigned to a powerful committee have also been found (Baekgaard & Kjaer, 2012; Bowler & Farrell, 1995; Martin & Mickler, 2019; Taylor-Robinson, 2014). Seniority could explain why there is a divergence in the way MP’s specialize to soft or hard issue committees, because the prestige committees are in need of utilizing the knowledge of the more politically experienced MP’s. It is suggested that since women have only recently come to parliament and exit sooner because of childrearing, they are more likely to take place in the less powerful committees (Murray & Sénac, 2018). This reasoning leads to the fourth and fifth and expectation:
H4: MP’s with more active years of experience within the parliament are more likely to specialize to a hard issue.
Prior committee experience is also relevant for committee assignments (Baekgaard & Kjaer, 2012; Mickler, 2018a). Legislators who have gained experience through committee service, are more likely to specialize to that issue again. However, since this study focuses on the variation between specializations to soft and hard issues, the expectations are adjusted to these outcomes. This creates the following hypotheses:
H5: MP’s who have previously served a hard issue committee are more likely to specialize to a hard issue.
H6: MP’s who have previously served a soft issue committee are more likely to specialize to a soft issue.
Gendered specialization
These studies and their expectations contribute extensively to the research field of committee specialization, but they ignore the explanatory role that gender may play. The mechanism of ‘a gendered organization of the legislature’ is still underexplored within this political research area (Bolzendahl, 2014). However, gender gaps within parliamentary specializations are visible (Murray & Sénac, 2018). An observed pattern is women being overrepresented in ‘soft’ issues such as health and educational committees, while being underrepresented in ‘hard’ issues such
as foreign affairs, finance and economics (Baekgaard & Kjaer, 2012; Coffé et al., 2019; Markham, 2012; Pansardi & Vercesi, 2017). In a study of Germany, Sweden and the United Stated, it is found that there is a tendency for men to be linked to instrumental issues, while women deal more with social issues (Bolzendahl, 2014). It is important for political scholars to find out why this is happening in legislatures. This skewed representation within ‘hard’ issues may have consequences for policy outcomes. Women offer a different perspective to issues, and these could be overlooked if women are underrepresented. Also, it could undermine the possibilities for women to acquire power and prestige necessary to develop their further political career, the way men are able to (Murray & Sénac, 2018; Sawer, 2000).
Bolzendahl (2014) conceptualizes legislatures as organizations that build gender into the institutional operations of policy making. She considers gender as a social structure that has an effect on both individual and institutional-level. It is suggested that women are framed as less instrumental than men, and more as ethical. This could explain why women specialize more in social and ethical issues. Murray & Sénac (2018) present an argument in the same perspective. They argue that political careers of MP’s are affected by gender. The theory states that power structures within the legislature create the opportunities for legislators to gain power and specialize in certain areas. A framing-argument is also suggested, stating that ‘women are pigeonholed into “feminized” areas in local and party politics’ (Murray & Sénac, 2018, p. 329). Results in France show that women are more likely to concentrate on soft portfolios and men are more likely to take place in hard issue committees. Similar empirical analysis is found in the European Parliament, with conclusions that gender plays a role in committee specialization. For example, female MP’s are more likely to take a seat in the Environment and Public Health Committee than male MP’s (McElroy, 2006). These studies imply that committee specialization of MP’s might not be gender neutral. Existing literature recommends further research should produce empirical support for this claim (Baekgaard & Kjaer, 2012). My expectation is that gender also plays a role in the committee specialization process to soft and hard issue committees.
H6: Female MP’s are more likely to specialize to ‘soft’ issues. H7: Male MP’s are more likely to specialize to ‘hard’ issues.
Research design
Prior studies have shown a variation in the way MP’s specialize to committees. Theories on what explains this outcome, for example the informational theory and the gendered organizations theory, have been suggested. The goal of this research is to investigate these theories of committee specializations by testing for the effect of gender and other rival factors such as expertise, experience and seniority. A research design that has been considered particularly fit for studying causality mechanisms is the single case study. It is defined as an in-depth study of a single unit, where the scholar’s goal is to explain the variations of a larger class of similar units (Weller & Barnes, 2016; Gerring, 2004). Case studies are appropriate for answering broad research questions, by providing a better understanding of how processes develop within a certain case (Swanborn, 2018). These particular understandings suggest some implications about the phenomenon in general. Thus, significant relationships between committee specializations and gender, prior experiences and seniority that are observed in one case, are relevant for the understandings of the general process of specialization. Finland is a case where the phenomenon of committee specialization develops itself. This makes the case fit for studying these variables. As a representative democracy with a unicameral parliament, the Finnish chamber is composed of 46% female legislators. This puts the country on the 11th place in the world’s ranking of women in parliament (IPU, 2020). The number of female MP’s in parliament is above average compared to women’s representation in other Western Countries. Of the 200 MP’s in parliament, 92 are female. This makes Finland a critical case. A critical case is a case which is likely to either clearly confirm or irrefutably falsify hypotheses (Flyvbjerg, 2006; Seawright & Gerring, 2008). With regard to critical cases, “studying one case may be decisive with respect to the choice between rival theories” (Swanborn, 2018, p. 50). Gender equality has been considered most advanced in Nordic countries for over a long time now (Baekgaard & Kjaer, 2012; Raaum, 2005; Taylor-Robinson, 2014; Wängnerud, 2009). It is relevant to test the gendered specialization thesis in a case in which gender equality is further advanced, and where it is least expected. If specialization is indeed influenced by gender, this would support the hypothesis. Conclusions on the role of gender in Finland’s political organization creates implications for further research in other Western countries.
The Finnish parliament in particular also offers advantages in case of representativeness. Over the past few years, Finland has implemented constitutional reforms, with the aim of moving closer to the parliamentary systems of other EU members. The reforms concern the restraining of presidential powers and the empowerment of the parliament (Raunio, 2004; Tiilikainen, 2006). The legislative organization of the parliament is now similar to that of many
other Western democratic countries, which makes the case useful for studying the role of gender within Western parliamentary specializations. Additionally, the Finnish parliament provides us with a large availability of data that is required to investigate committee issue specialization. With over 250 committee seats available for permanent intake, the data is suitable for making inferences on the effects of gender, expertise, and seniority on committee specialization.
Data
The hypotheses indicate that female legislators are more likely to work on soft issues, while male legislators are more likely to specialize to hard issues. For this reason, issue specialization of all the legislators of the current tenure is measured. The best way to measure specialization is to measure the issues that legislators distinctively work on, which is done in the committees. Information on the committee seat distribution is accessed through the main website of the Finnish parliament. All 16 permanent special committees per November 2020 are taken with in the analysis. These are considered the most powerful, because the dossiers that are set up here serve as the crucial basis for plenary readings and discussions (Aulanko, 2015). Less influential committees such as the subcommittees and housing committees are excluded from the analysis. One of the more powerful committees, the Grand Committee, is also excluded. For this committee, the membership assignments are based on prior chairman positions within PPG’s or permanent committees. The effects of gender and prior experiences are expected to play a different role for the specialization to this committee.
Some legislators serve on more than one permanent committee, which means that those legislators are taken along multiple times in the dataset. Many legislators also serve as deputy members on committees, besides their permanent membership of a committee. For this reason, a second dataset is set up that measures issue specialization through deputy membership. To make inferences on both specializations of permanent membership and deputy membership, and compare the results, is considered useful for a better understanding of the process of specialization within legislative organizations.
Committee specialization to soft or hard committees is analyzed through statistical analysis. This test is best suitable for drawing conclusions on what factors strongly predict whether an MP is more likely to specialize to a soft or hard issue. Since there are two possible outcomes, it is done through binary logistic regression. The list of the 16 special committees, that is found on the Eduskunta’s website, is transformed into a binary variable that splits them up into ‘soft issue’ committees (value 0) and ‘hard issue’ committees (value 1) (see Table 1).
The committee classification follows that of prior studies of women’s representation (Heath, Schwindt-Bayer, & Taylor-Robinson, 2005; Murray & Sénac, 2018; Schwindt-bayer, 2006; Taylor-Robinson, 2014). The issues that are operationalized as soft issues are social issues such as health, family, children and women’s rights (Duverger, 1955). Political scientists found that social issues such as education, environment, welfare and labor are specializations where women are found handling more portfolios (Heath et al., 2005; Pansardi & Vercesi, 2017; Wängnerud, 2009). Recent literature follows these traditional concepts of what defines social issues, but adds issues such as equality and GLBTQA rights (Evans & Clark, 2016), since these are also considered issues that are salient within the social debates.
While women were found dealing more with these social issues, men were more likely to serve on law, foreign affairs, finance and economic committees. These are traditionally considered the more ‘hard issues’ (Baekgaard & Kjaer, 2012; Bolzendahl, 2014; Murray & Sénac, 2018). For example, some of the considered hard committees are the Audit Committee, a committee that oversees government finances, and the Committee for the Future, that serves as a think tank for futures, science and technology. The Administration Committee, that deals with state, regional, and local administration, but also emergency and rescue services and accident investigation is also considered a hard issue committee.
Table 1. Operationalization of the current permanent special committees of the Eduskunta Riksdagen.
Hard issue Soft issue
Constitutional Law Agriculture and Forestry
Foreign Affairs Education and Culture
Finance Employment and Equality
Audit Environment
Administration Social Affairs and Health
Commerce Future Defense Legal Affairs
Transport and Communications Intelligence Oversight
The explanatory variables of this analysis are gender, expertise, committee experience, and seniority. Gender has two possible values and is operationalized as either female (value 0) or male (value 1). The genders of the legislators were retrieved via the website, through the personal pages of the legislators, and through their individual websites with additional personal information. The division of parliamentary seats to female and male legislators within the current legislature is close to equal (see Chart 1).
Expertise is conceptualized as relevant expertise that will be useful for certain specializations. The informational theory assumes that legislators who have expertise through prior experiences are more likely to specialize to the relevant policy issue, since legislative specialization has the aim of minimizing uncertainties. For this reason, expertise is analyzed through the variables of prior education and occupations of the legislators. This is coded according to the ISCO-08 classification, and then according to relevancy for the specific committee (1=relevant prior education or occupation, 0=no relevant prior occupation or education). The purpose is to identify educations and occupations that provide relevant information and knowledge to a legislator for either the soft or hard issue committee that they are serving. Both educations and occupations fit within this classification scheme and the relevancy of knowledge is based on educations and occupations taken together, because to have relevant experience in either one of them could already explain why legislators specialize to an issue. For example, experience through an education in economics or a prior financial profession, such as controlling or accounting (ISCO-08 code: 241), are coded as relevant for the Finance Committee, while legislators with a master of education, or education teachers (ISCO-08 code: 2310, 2320, 2330) are coded as having relevant occupational knowledge for the Education and Culture Committee. This data is retrieved from the personal pages on the Eduskunta website, but it is also accessed through legislator’s individual websites, where full resumes are published.
Chart 1. The division of the 200 parliamentary seats of the current legislature of the Eduskunta
Seniority is also considered an important factor for specialization to soft or hard issue committees. Legislators with more active years in the parliamentary chamber have more political experience. Those who have more years of experience are expected to specialize to a hard issue committee more than the legislators with less parliamentary experience.
For each legislator, political experience is conceptualized as seniority. This variable has been coded as a quantitative independent variable, with the number of active years in parliament as the value. This data is gathered through the legislators’ personal pages, which offers data on previous held terms and offices within the parliament.
Committee experience is measured by earlier memberships and positions held by the legislators. This information is coded as either ‘the legislator has prior experience within the committee’ (=1) or ‘the legislator has no prior experience within the committee’ (=0).
Table 2. Descriptive statistics of the dependent variable of permanent committee specialization and the independent variables.
N Std. Deviation Minimum Maximum Mean
Specialization (DV) 267 0,468 0 1 0,68
Prior education and occupation 267 0,499 0 1 0,46
Committee experience 267 0,492 0 1 0,41
Seniority 267 7,147 1 45 6,03
Gender 267 0,499 0 1 0,54
Source: own dataset
Results
A binary logistic regression model is used to test the effects of the predictor variables expertise, committee experience, seniority and gender on the dichotomous outcome variable issue specialization (Field, 2013, p. 793). Issue specialization has two possible outcomes: ‘soft issue’ or ‘hard issue’. One of the assumptions of this regression model is linearity, which means that the continuous predictor variables and the logit of the outcome must be linear related (Field, 2013, p. 794). This model contains three nominal variables and one continuous variable. I tested the linearity assumption for the continuous variable ‘seniority’, a variable which is measured as number of active years in the parliament. The results show no significant interaction terms. This means that the assumption of linearity is met. A second assumption requires that there must be no multicollinearity between the predictor variables (Field, 2013, p. 794). This is not the case, since all tolerance values are higher than 0,1 and the VIF values indicate no problems either, with a value range of 1 to 1,3. Only one outlier was detected in the dataset for the
permanent committee seats, through a casewise list. This outlier was removed, according to Field’s (2013, p. 176) recommendation.
A second model was performed to test for issue specialization via deputy membership to committees. The outcome variable has the same two possible outcomes ‘soft issue’ or ‘hard issue’. There are no significant interaction terms for the continuous variable ‘seniority’ and there is no multicollinearity between the variables (Field, 2013, p. 793-794). The tolerance values are far above 0,1 and VIF values range from 1 to 1,2. There were no outliers detected in the deputy member seat dataset (Field, 2013, p. 176).
Table 3. Logistic regression analysis of issue specialization.
Permanent membership Deputy membership Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4
(Constant) 0,693* 1,185*** 0,430 0,910** (0,276) (0,337) (0,253) (0,298) Expertise -0,755** -1,574*** -0,566* -0,869* (Ref.=no relevant expertise) (0,271) (0,412) (0,278) (0,394) Committee experience -0,494 -0,408 0,454 -0,559 (Ref.=no prior committee experience) (0,347) (0,319) (0,343) (0,338) Seniority 0,049 0,062 0,022 0,005 (0,032) (0,027) (0,029) (0,028) Gender 0,406 -0,327 0,461 -0,734 (Ref.=female) (0,271) (0,464) (0,278) (0,452) Gender*Expertise 1,557** 0,612 (0,557) (0,565) Gender*Seniority -0,012 0,222*** (0,048) (0,070)
Cox & Snell 𝑹𝟐 0,063 0,089 0,050 0,059
Nagelkerke 𝑹𝟐 0,088 0,125 0,069 0,081
N 267 267 248 248
Binary logistic regression-coefficients with standard errors ***p<0,001, **p<0,01, *p<0,05
The results of the analysis are presented in Table 3. Model 1 and 2 show the effects of the predictor variables of issue specialization through permanent membership. In model 1, only the results of the main effects are shown, while model 2 also presents the results for the interaction effects of gender with expertise, and gender with seniority. Model 3 and 4 present the results of issue specialization through deputy membership, with again one model that shows the main effects of the variables and one that shows the interaction effects. The results are intuitively
interpreted through the odds ratio values, and the effects are explained as the likelihood of specializing to a hard issue.
Expertise is a strong predictor of issue specialization. However, the results are unexpected. Legislators with relevant expertise are less likely to specialize to a hard issue. This means that expertise is more relevant for social issue specialization. Legislators with an educational or occupational background in a social issue are 2,12 times more likely to serve their relevant committee issue. This is a significant effect (see Table 3). The variable of expertise explains the variation in the outcome of the specialization process. The social issue committees possess more members with expertise, while hard issue committees are mostly composed of members who lack relevant educational or occupational background (see Table 3.1). Out of the 181 hard issue seats, 109 are taken by legislators who do not have the relevant prior knowledge gained through their education or work experience, which is 60,2% of the seats. This is more compared to the soft issues, where only 41,9% of the seats is taken by a legislator without educational or occupational experience. This means that hypotheses 1 on soft issues is confirmed, while hypotheses 2 about specialization to hard issues cannot be supported. The results on expertise are similar for the allocation of deputy seats. Expertise decreases the odds of specializing to a hard issue. This means that legislators with social expertise are 1,76 times more likely to specialize to a relevant issue than their colleagues who have relevant expertise in hard issues, due to their education or work experience. The deputy seats of soft issues are slightly more appointed to legislators with a relevant background (51,7%), while merely 37.9% of the hard issue seats are assigned to legislators who have a relevant background.
Table 3.1. Cross table of prior education and occupation and specialization to permanent soft or hard issue committee.
Relevant prior education or occupation
Not fitting Fitting Total
Specialization Soft issue 36 41,9% 50 58,1% 86 100%
Hard issue 109 60,2% 72 39,8% 181 100%
Total 145 122 267
Source: own dataset
The question is why this differs for soft and hard issues. One thing that should be considered is the saliency of issues. Over the past decades, cultural issues on multiculturalism and interculturalism have been highly salient in Finland. These issues are dealt with in areas of Social and Health Affairs and Education and Culture specializations. Those specific institutions for multicultural affairs have been given much attention (Saukkonen & Pyykkönen, 2008). This
could explain why the soft ‘social’ issues are composed more of experienced MP’s than the hard ‘instrumental’ issues, which are currently less salient. Also, Finland is one of the countries that is considered to have a strong welfare state. “The Nordic countries have developed vibrant cooperation in many public policy fields, the collaboration being strongest in the fields of social, education and labour market policies” (Baldacchino et al., 2020, p. 121).
Expertise is important. Nevertheless, gender also plays a role for how MPs specialize. While the main effect of gender is not significantly strong (p=0,134), men are 1,5 times more likely than women to specialize to a hard issue. Consequently, female legislators are more likely to specialize to a soft issue. This means that hypothesis 6 and 7 are both confirmed. However, something that is more relevant is the interaction effect between expertise and gender (see Model 2), and between seniority and gender (see Model 4). The expectations were that female legislators are more likely to specialize to soft issues, while male legislators are more likely to specialize to a hard issue. The model shows this to be true, but apparently there is more going on. Model 2 tells us that for permanent membership issue specialization, male legislators with relevant expertise are significantly more likely to specialize to a hard issue. Model 4 shows us that for deputy membership issue specialization, male legislators with a senior position are more likely to specialize to a hard issue than their female colleagues. The odds are significantly higher for men to specialize to a hard issue than for women, even when women have the relevant expertise or the same amount of experience by having served multiple years in the chamber. For example, with every extra active year in parliament, men are 1,25 times more likely to specialize to a hard issue, compared to their female colleagues who served the same amount of years.
These interaction effects indicate that women have less opportunities to specialize to certain issues, even when they have the same amount of political experience or relevant expertise within an issue. Many scholars have speculated on the idea of female marginalization within the parliament. “Although previous research shows gender quotas increase the presence of women in legislatures, some argue women remain marginalized (…) by restricting their activity to “gendered” issues at the expense of other types of policy areas” (Kerevel & Atkeson, 2013, p. 980). Women are more often taking place at the decision-making tables, but this does not mean that they also have an equal chance to sit at every table. This tackles an import discussion point. It is sometimes stated that women serve certain issues, because their interest and priority lies with these issues (Schwindt-bayer, 2006). This study shows that even when women have relevant expertise in a hard issue, which could be considered their interest or
The main effects of seniority and committee experience are also worth discussing, even though they are less explanatory. Seniority, conceptualized as the number of years that a legislator is active in the parliament, increases the odds of hard issue specialization. The results on seniority support the expectations of hypothesis 4. If the active years in parliament increases by one, the odds of specializing into a hard issue increases by 1,31. This positive relation between seniority and hard issue specialization is evident. The 10 legislators who have been the longest in the parliament, which ranges from 20 to 45 years, all serve hard issues (except for one).1 This supports the argument of Bowler and Farrell (1995): the importance of the length of tenure within the parliament for committee specialization.
Bowler and Farrel (1995) also considered the importance of previously serving a committee for specializations. My expectations were that MP’s with prior hard issue committee experience were more likely to specialize to a hard issue, and MP’s with prior soft issue committee experience were more likely to specialize to a soft issue. The models confirm that soft issue specialization is somewhat driven by prior committee experience, for either permanent seats as well as deputy seats. For the permanent committee seats, the odds of specializing to a soft issue increase by 1,64 when MPs have prior committee experience, in comparison to serving a hard issue. This effect is similar for deputy allocation. MPs with prior committee experience are 1,56 more likely to specialize to a soft issue as a deputy member than to a hard issue. Hypothesis 6 is thus confirmed. Hypothesis 5 on hard issues is however not confirmed. For hard issues, the continuity rate of committee seats is lower.
Conclusion
The main question of this thesis is why legislators differ in the way they specialize. There is great concern of a skewed representation within certain issues. This concern dominates not only the scholarly debates but also affects societal discussions. Scholars argue that citizen’s interests are best represented by politicians who have the same experiences and descriptive characteristics. And not as least as important, citizens desire this too. Parliaments in representative democracies claim to serve the interests of the members of society. However, many of those parliaments are not nearly close to being a reflection of its diversity. In practice, men are found mostly specializing to financial and economic issues, while women are often
1The legislators serve the following committees: Biaudet serves Foreign Affairs; Sarkomaa serves Finance;
Filatov serves Finance and Intelligence Supervision; Räsanen serves Audit; Viitanen serves Finance and Audit; Tuomij serves Foreign Affairs and Defense; Gustafsson serves Constitutional Law; Zyskowicz serves
found dealing with social issues. This is considered an undesirable aspect of legislative organization. It is important to get more insight on why legislators serve the committees that they are in. If gender aspects are indeed found to be influencing the specialization process, this means women face obstacles that prevent them from fostering their political career. Scholars can propose concrete suggestions that are useful for chasing the equality ideals of representative democracy.
This study found that women are more less likely to specialize to hard issues, even when they have relevant expertise in this hard issue or are a senior within parliament. These results emphasize that women more often specialize to soft issues, because of their gender. To answer the puzzle of the descriptive underrepresentation of women: gender appears to play an explanatory role in the phenomenon of issue specialization. This corrobates existing literature on the effects of gender on specializations. In the European Parliament, a significant effect of gender was measured for social committees such as the environment and health committees (McElroy, 2006). In France, women are significantly less likely to sit on the defense or finance committees (Murray & Sénac, 2018).
Another strikingly observation is the effect of expertise. Expertise through education or occupations has previously been argued to have an impact on committee assignments by many scholars (McElroy, 2006; Mickler, 2019). This study adds to the confirmation of the theory that expertise explains and predicts issue specializations. To supplement prior literature on the informational theory, this study aimed to find out if prior education and occupation is a more relevant predictor for either soft issue or hard issue specialization. The results indicate that expertise matters more for soft issues than hard issues. This goes against results presented by Baekgaard and Kjaer (2012), who argued that legislators with greater experiences have better chances of becoming a member of a powerful committees such as the Finance Committee. However, other scholars support the claim that social committees are more likely to have experienced members serving them. Murray and Sénac (2018) have found evidence of this kind, arguing that membership of social committees is significantly driven by prior expertise.
Committee experience also has a stronger effect for soft issues than for hard issues. Within the soft issue committees, the continuity rate of serving a committee is higher. The importance of committee incumbency has been emphasized before (Hamm et al., 2011; Martin & Mickler, 2019; McElroy, 2006). However, the results of this study add new insights to the understanding of legislative specializations, since it focuses more on the variations between certain issues, instead of the assignments to specific committees. The evidence on seniority
The explanations of issue specialization through permanent membership differs from what explains issue specialization through deputy membership. While expertise explains how MPs specialize through their permanent committee seats, seniority is a more relevant explanatory factor of issue specialization through substitute committee membership. This leads to questions on why expertise is more important for permanent memberships, while seniority is more relevant for deputy membership. A follow-up study could investigate the differences between permanent and deputy committee membership.
Limitations and further research
Although this study provides relevant insights into the workings of legislative organizations and issue specializations, it does have some limitations. These limitations automatically lead to recommendations for further research. First of all, the phenomenon of specialization is investigated within a least likely case, and it is important that the results must be interpreted within the context of the case. The selection of Finland was based on the assumption that the impact of gender is least expected here. Choosing a case in which a phenomenon is least expected is useful for verifying hypotheses. Finland is one of the more outstanding countries of Europe when it comes to gender equality and equal opportunities. Hence, gendered specialization is least expected here. To discover that gender indeed does have an impact in such a case, says something about specialization processes in general. It suggests that it is more likely that the effect of gender is also present in other cases. For example, countries where the circumstances for gender equality are deemed less favorable. The goal was not to generalize the results across a section of cases or make inferences about other countries. This study is performed to provide an understanding of the process within Finland, and make inferences about issue specializations in general. The results implicate that gender plays a role in Finland and might play a larger role in other cases. Further research into gendered specializations is hereby encouraged.
Another limitation is that this study only focused on the current tenure of the Eduskunta. However, it would be relevant to investigate whether the effects have changed over time, considering the social developments and aims of tackling gender imparity. For example, has expertise always been a strong predictor of social issue specialization or is this a more recent development? Also, the data indicates that men are more likely to specialize to hard issues than women. It is useful to know if this effect has increased over time or that other factors have come to play a larger role. Not all suggested factors are tested within this
gender. Within existing literature, party ideology is also mentioned as a suggested theory that could explain how legislators specialize. In an ideal world, this analysis would have tested for all the possible explanations of a phenomenon, with the aim of measuring the strongest effect. For this study, it was not possible to test for party ideology, for the reason that party-level factors cannot be measured the same way as individual factors, such as expertise, seniority or gender. It is however encouraged that further research considers testing for this theory as well.
Something that is also important to further investigate is the effect of other minority group characteristics on the way legislators specialize. This study focused on the effect of gender, but this theory is also in some way applicable to other underrepresented groups. For example, ethnic minorities have found themselves taking up larger space in the parliaments over the past few years, and their voices become more salient. It is important to understand how these minority groups organize themselves politically, and to consider the way they represent their constituents and impact the policy process.
The results of this study contribute to the puzzle of underrepresentation of certain groups, an issue that is still salient up to this day. It is observed that women, an
underrepresented group, have increasingly joined the political activities in parliament.
However, they find themselves faced with certain barriers within the legislative organization. This study emphasizes that while striving for equal opportunities of politicians, gender bias must be considered a real and influential factor in political careers.
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Appendix
Further explanation of committees:
*The Constitutional Law Committee issues statements on bills considering the constitutionality and bearing of international human rights.
*The Foreign Affairs Committee deals with treaties, general foreign and security policy, foreign trade, development cooperation, and international organizations.
*The Finance Committee deals with state budgets and long term budgetary planning, as well as legislative matters concerning taxes.
*The Agriculture and Forestry Committee deals with water resources management, rural livelihoods, veterinary medicine, food hygiene, animal protection, land survey.
*The Commerce Committee deals with matters of trade, industry, energy economy, business, competition, consumer protection, banks and other financial institutions, insurance, markets and the Bank of Finland
*The Defense Committee deals with matters on military service and peacekeeping operations. *The Education and Culture Committee deals with matters relating to education, training, science, art, culture, sports, youth work and financial aid for students.
*The Environment Committee deals with matters of housing, planning, construction, environmental protection and nature conservation, waste management and water legislation. *The Legal Affairs Committee deals with legislation related to family law, the law of succession, the law of obligations and property law, criminal and procedural law, the courts and the prison service.
*The Social Affairs and Health Committee deals with matters of social welfare, health care, social insurance, pension legislation and environmental health care.
*The Transport and Communications Committee deals with matters concerning road, rail, air, water traffic, navigation, transport law, working time regulations in the transport sector, traffic safety, post, telecommunications, radio and television, information security, meteorological service and the Finnish Broadcasting Company.
*The Intelligence Oversight Committee serves as parliamentary watchdog of civilian and military intelligence operations. It oversees the proper implementation of intelligence operations, monitors and evaluates the focus areas and foresees the effective exercise of fundamental human rights operations.
Output for permanent membership dataset
Variables in the Equation
B S.E. Wald df Sig. Exp(B) Step 1a Gender(1) ,406 ,271 2,244 1 ,134 1,501
Number of years active in parliament
,049 ,032 2,407 1 ,121 1,050 Relevant prior education or
occupation(1) -,755 ,271 7,751 1 ,005 ,470 Relevant committee experience of same committee(1) -,494 ,347 2,024 1 ,155 ,610 Constant ,693 ,274 6,392 1 ,011 1,999 a. Variable(s) entered on step 1: Gender, Seniority, Number of years active in parliament, Relevant prior education or occupation, Relevant committee experience of same committee.
Variables in the Equation
B S.E. Wald df Sig. Exp(B)
95% C.I.for EXP(B) Lower Upper Step 1a Gender(1) -,389 ,396 ,967 1 ,325 ,678 ,312 1,472
Number of years active in parliament
,055 ,027 4,093 1 ,043 1,057 1,002 1,114 Relevant prior education
or occupation(1) -1,579 ,411 14,787 1 ,000 ,206 ,092 ,461 Relevant committee experience of same committee(1) -,404 ,319 1,599 1 ,206 ,668 ,357 1,249 Gender(1) by Relevant prior education or occupation(1) 1,556 ,557 7,814 1 ,005 4,740 1,592 14,110 Constant 1,185 ,337 12,373 1 ,000 3,272
a. Variable(s) entered on step 1: Gender, Number of years active in parliament, Relevant prior education or occupation, Relevant committee experience of same committee, Gender * Relevant prior education or occupation .
Output for deputy membership dataset
Variables in the Equation
B S.E. Wald df Sig. Exp(B) Step 1a Gender(1) ,461 ,278 2,746 1 ,098 1,586
Seniority (1) ,500 ,411 1,479 1 ,224 1,648 seniority as active years in
parliament
,022 ,029 ,586 1 ,444 1,023 relevant prior education or
occupation(1)
-,566 ,278 4,146 1 ,042 ,568 Relevant committee experience
of same committee (1)
a. Variable(s) entered on step 1: Gender, Seniority , seniority as active years in parliament, relevant prior education or occupation, Relevant committee experience of same committee .
Variables in the Equation
B S.E. Wald df Sig. Exp(B) Step 1a Gender(1) ,112 ,339 ,110 1 ,740 1,119
seniority as active years in parliament
,050 ,025 4,028 1 ,045 1,051 relevant prior education or
occupation(1)
-,605 ,280 4,668 1 ,031 ,546 Relevant committee experience
of same committee (1)
-,919 ,452 4,131 1 ,042 ,399
Gender(1) by Relevant committee experience of same committee (1)
1,142 ,586 3,797 1 ,051 3,134
Constant ,656 ,272 5,829 1 ,016 1,927 a. Variable(s) entered on step 1: Gender, seniority as active years in parliament, relevant prior education or occupation, Relevant committee experience of same committee , Gender * Relevant committee experience of same committee .
