Evoking Equality: The Gender Sensitivity of Parliaments through their Symbolic Function

Abstract

This article examines parliaments as symbol-makers beyond the actions of individual Members of Parliament or parliamentary party groups. In doing so, it develops an analytical framework for studying how legislatures symbolically represent women and, more generally, how they stand for gender equality. The article identifies who are the symbol-makers on behalf of the institution and outlines several indicators that allow assessing how the symbolic may further the gender sensitivity of parliaments. The indicators are clustered into two domains: on one hand, physical spaces, and, on the other hand, communications and public outreach. Drawing on examples from parliaments around the world, the article documents the wide range of available repertoires aimed at eroding the association between politics and masculinity. It also discusses the expected impact of symbolic activity on the targeted audiences and pinpoints the ways in which descriptive, substantive and symbolic representation build onto each other.

Keywords

gender-sensitive parliaments institutional innovation public engagement symbolic representation women’s representation

Introduction

Increasing scholarly attention has been paid to the role that parliaments as institutions have on descriptive representation – numerical presence of social groups – and on substantive representation – acting for specific constituencies – beyond the action of political parties, parliamentary groups or individual Members of Parliament (MPs). Studies using a gendered workplace perspective have identified the ways in which the gender-biased or apparently gender-neutral rules of parliament and its inner workings constrain women’s access to legislatures and undermine equality of influence (Erikson and Josefsson, 2019; Erikson and Verge, 2020; Franceschet, 2011; Kantola and Rolandsen Agustín, 2019). In sharp contrast, the role that parliaments as institutions take on regarding symbolic representation – constituents’ feelings of ‘being fairly and effectively represented’ (Pitkin, 1967: 92) – has been under-researched by gender and politics scholars and parliamentary studies scholars alike (but see Leston-Bandeira, 2012, 2016; Verge, 2020).

Several works have looked into the effects that women’s descriptive or substantive representation in parliament have on citizens’ political engagement and on their attitudes towards political institutions (for a review of the literature, see Espírito-Santo and Verge, 2017; Franceschet et al., 2012) and a few studies have examined the self-representations of congresswomen (Brown and Gershon, 2016; Niven and Zilber, 2001). Nonetheless, hitherto, little is known about the array of activities through which parliaments can convey and create new meanings about equal gender representation. With a view to filling this gap, this article delves into how the symbolic function is enacted within and by legislatures, thereby examining symbolic representation as a dimension in its own right (Lombardo and Meier, 2014; Rai, 2010; Verge, 2020). More specifically, I develop an analytical framework for studying how parliaments as institutions symbolically represent women and, more generally, how they stand for gender equality beyond the actions of individual MPs or parliamentary party groups.

The first section of the article addresses the issue of the elusive measurement of the symbolic function of parliaments by identifying who are the symbol-makers on behalf of the institution and by outlining several indicators that allow assessing how the symbolic may further the gender sensitivity of legislatures. These indicators are clustered into two domains: on one hand, physical spaces, and, on the other hand, communications and public outreach. The second section illustrates each of the indicators through examples that capture the wide range of gender-sensitive symbolic activities implemented by parliaments around the world. The third section discusses the expected impact of claim-making activity on the targeted audiences and pinpoints the ways in which descriptive, substantive and symbolic representation are mutually co-constitutive. The last section highlights the main findings and suggests various avenues for furthering the study of the symbolic function of parliaments.

Analytical Framework for Studying the Gender Sensitivity of the Symbolic Function

Even though the symbolic function is not the core function of parliaments, ‘it is by no means marginal’ (Leston-Bandeira, 2016: 512). The symbolic is indeed pervasive in parliaments because they are the ‘theatre of democracy’ (Rai and Spary, 2019: 2). Legislatures stage democratic politics through aesthetics, discourses and performances that evoke specific meanings about the representative process, the representatives and the represented (Rai, 2017: 507). This symbolic activity is highly consequential for the feeling of being represented among constituents. However, studies on the ways in which parliaments seek to build ‘an institutional identity’ for themselves (Kelso, 2007: 372–373) and ‘reinforce the presence of the actual institution’ by means of claims of representation that convey ideas and meanings about what the institution stands for (Judge and Leston-Bandeira, 2018: 157) are far and between.

The few existing works on the institutional claims made on behalf of parliaments have mainly focussed on the public engagement activities through which legislatures seek to promote a deeper understanding and awareness of the role of parliament and its relevance to people’s lives, thereby eliciting a sense of ownership of the institution among the public aimed at ‘maintain[ing] the existing reservoir of diffuse support’ (Leston-Bandeira, 2012: 522; see also Hendriks and Kay, 2019; Kelso, 2007; Leston-Bandeira and Walker, 2018). Yet, since symbol-making activity produces and reproduces ‘the material bases of political power’ (Kertzer, 1988: 3), parliaments may also reinforce or challenge social hierarchies such as gender through the meanings embodied by spaces, decorations, images, rules, ceremonies and rituals (Rai and Spary, 2019: 5) or through representative claim-making (Verge, 2020).

Symbols construct social identities and (de)legitimise objects, subjects and practices, enabling the circulation of new meanings about both a constituency and the legitimacy of its claims (Lombardo and Meier, 2019: 235; Saward, 2006: 305). Ultimately, the symbolic has the ‘potential of opening up new political spaces, vocabularies and discourses which challenge the dominant modes of power’ (Rai, 2010: 292), according parliaments wider, more creative and flexible forms of representation (Leston-Bandeira, 2016: 512). Given that changes at the symbolic level matter because power and its simultaneous inclusion and exclusion dynamics are intrinsic to symbol-making, from a gender perspective, it is crucial to assess the capacity of parliaments to elicit new meanings about who, what and how may be represented (Lombardo and Meier, 2014: 36).

The Elusive Measurement of the Symbolic Function of Parliaments

Although the symbolic function of parliaments is the least researched of their functions (Leston-Bandeira, 2012: 523), references to legislatures’ symbol-making activity are widespread in the literature, particularly in the gender and politics scholarship, which has pinpointed how it may yield both negative and positive consequences for women’s representation. This notwithstanding, as the following review illustrates, symbolising ‘is not a self-evident measure of representation’ (Eulau and Karps, 1977: 235). On the negative side, studies have noted, for example, that Oxford Union styles of debate – including jibes, taunts or farmyard noises – evoke the image of a particular type of male occupant of the parliamentary seat (Lovenduski, 2014: 18). Similarly, the gendered make-up of parliamentary committees elicits specific meanings about the expertise and capacity of legislators that are based on social scripts of femininity and masculinity (Heath et al., 2005: 433). For their part, legislative outputs can symbolically construct unequal gender relations, for instance, by upholding women’s socially assigned role as caregivers (Lombardo and Meier, 2014: 147), while failing to institute anti-harassment policies in the parliamentary workplace conveys the idea that there is impunity for perpetrators (Erikson and Verge, 2020: 10).

Positive references to the symbolic are also frequently found in the literature. For instance, recognising the caring responsibilities of MPs through the provision of parliamentary crèche services or proxy voting may challenge the gender status quo ‘at symbolic and interpersonal levels’ (Mackay, 2014: 567). As for equality structures, a gender-focussed parliamentary committee is ‘an important symbol’ of a legislature’s concern with gender issues (Rai and Spary, 2019: 239), while the existence of a reference or issue-based group that promotes gender equality and inclusion within the institution ‘plays a crucial symbolic role’ (Freidenvall and Erikson, 2020: 634), demonstrating that parliaments ‘take seriously diversity insensitivities and deficiencies’ (Childs, 2016: 14).

The Symbol-Makers

Those making claims of representation that convey meanings about what the institution stands for are not merely ‘agents’ in the conventional sense of representation, ‘but equally or more importantly, they are ‘actors’’ (Saward, 2006: 302). The contours of a parliament’s symbol-making activity can be delineated through a combination of functionalist and actor-centred approaches. The representative function (descriptive representation) is in the hands of political parties as gatekeepers to elected office. The legislative and scrutiny functions (substantive representation) are performed by individual MPs and parliamentary party groups. Conversely, the legitimation function (symbolic representation) is carried out by the institution itself (Leston-Bandeira, 2016: 512). Who can then symbolise what the institution stands for?

The context in which MPs can build their link with constituencies is ‘imbued with symbolic representation that may constrain or enable’ their position and action (Lombardo and Meier, 2019: 232), but MPs ‘are at best tangential makers of institutional representative claims’ (Judge and Leston-Bandeira, 2018: 162). Indeed, making claims from within an institution does not equal to making institutional claims. For example, while Eurosceptic MPs make strong claims against the European Parliament from within its premises, such claims are the anti-symbol of this supra-national legislature’s identity. In other words, these are ‘anti-institutional claims’ (Judge and Leston-Bandeira, 2018: 162). Likewise, in the last few years, several women MPs have taken or breastfed their babies in the hemicycle of various parliaments. Rather than being an institutional claim, this symbolic act aims at denouncing the family-unfriendly parliamentary workplace and at ‘send[ing] a message to young women that they belong in the parliament’, as Australian Senator Larissa Waters declared (BBC News, 2017).

Therefore, instances of high symbolic representation by individual MPs can coexist with low to none symbolic representation by the institution. Simultaneously, this systemic institutional dimension is independent from the symbolic representation exerted by individual MPs, as it ‘is not confined to person-to-person or group-to-group interactions’ (Judge and Leston-Bandeira, 2018: 155). Its goal is to instil a feeling of connection beyond the MP-constituency link, that is, to connect citizens with the actual legislature (Leston-Bandeira, 2012: 515). The narrative of claim-makers must thus be ‘consciously institutional’ so that it contributes to the ‘representation of parliaments as institutions’ (Judge and Leston-Bandeira, 2018: 164). In this vein, for example, while speakers are MPs affiliated to a parliamentary party group, their institutional claim-making is expected to ‘avoid the party politics element of representation’ (Leston-Bandeira, 2016: 504).

Besides the speaker or presiding officer, symbol-makers on behalf of the parliament may include the bureau of the chamber, a cross-party group of MPs or a parliamentary committee when the representative claim is crosscutting and non-partisan, or the parliamentary services – predominantly the public engagement and communications services. In the case of institutional claims on gender equality, symbol-makers may also include parliamentary committees on women’s rights, cross-party caucuses of women MPs, and issue-based or reference groups that promote equality policies within the parliament’s inner workings.¹

Indicators, Data and Methods

According to the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), a gender-sensitive parliament (GSP) ‘responds to the needs and interests of both men and women in its structures, operations, methods and work’ and acts to ‘remove the barriers to women’s full participation and offer a positive example or model to society at large’ (IPU, 2011: 6). Gender sensitivity should also encompass the symbolic function of a parliament, which the European Institute for Gender Equality defines as the extent to which gender equality is part of the meanings conveyed by the institution (European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE), 2018).

Although the symbolic dimension was already present in some questions of IPU’s (2016) GSP self-assessment toolkit, EIGE (2018) sets out several indicators to help parliaments scrutinise how the gender equality perspective is integrated in their symbolic function. These indicators are clustered into two domains, as Table 1 shows. On one hand, the symbolic meaning of physical spaces maps out the policies that can improve the gender sensitivity of these spaces in legislative assemblies, particularly regarding the symbolisms embodied that reproduce social relations of power by including and excluding certain subjects and practices (Rai, 2010). On the other hand, the symbolic in communications examines whether gender equality is a visible part of parliaments’ external identity and self-portrayal, in terms of both freeing official communications from gender stereotypes and making society at large aware of the relevance of gender issues by giving them visibility throughout parliamentary activity (EIGE, 2018). Based on my own research and gender consultancy to parliaments, I have added a few indicators to this domain that capture parliaments’ public outreach activities that target female citizens and women’s civil society organisations.

Table 1.

Gendering the Study of the Symbolic Function: Domains and Indicators.

Physical spaces	Communications and public outreach
• Existence of childcare facilities • Policies to enhance the gender-sensitivity of physical spaces • Room entitlements in the parliamentary building • Symbolic meanings of paintings and decorations • Existence of women’s rooms^a	• Gender-sensitive official communications • Gender equality in the parliament’s channels of communication • Gender balance in delegations, events and awards^a • Gender equality in public outreach activities targeting women^a • Gender equality initiatives for the public • Engagement with ongoing societal campaigns on women’s rights^a

Source: Adapted from EIGE (2018).

Indicators added by the author.

As Erikson and Verge (2020: 12) posit, ‘the positive feedback loop between practitioner and academic perspectives on parliaments (. . .) promotes further theoretical development and empirical inquiry’. While in EIGE’s toolkit, the indicators are coded dichotomously, identifying how claim-making is enacted in practice demands more than a yes/no measurement. A thorough examination of the symbolic meaning of physical spaces from a gender lens requires collecting information about the parliament building, including its history, architecture, decoration, and existing formal and informal rules for organising the spaces within it. The empirical analysis can combine aesthetics – on-site visits – and ethnography – interviews with parliamentary officials, staff and MPs – (Puwar, 2004; Rai, 2010) with a documentary analysis of existing parliamentary rules for room entitlements, space renovations or the commissioning of artwork displayed in parliamentary buildings. As for the domain of communications and public outreach, besides examining official policies such as language style guides and rules for the organisation of events or for awarding medals, scholars can undertake a content analysis of the internal and external written, graphic and audio-visual materials issued through parliaments’ channels of communication (website and social media accounts). Researchers can also look at the number and type of initiatives promoted by the institution that seek to engage female citizens and women’s organisations and examine the performative and discursive elements found in such events (Verge, 2020). In both domains, a discursive analysis of the speeches given by symbol-makers when inaugurating new spaces or exhibitions and interviews with these actors can be of paramount importance for disentangling the intention – that is, the narrative – underpinning institutional claims (Judge and Leston-Bandeira, 2018: 155).

Exploring How Parliaments Are Gendering Their Symbolic Function

For each of the indicators catalogued, this section provides examples of activities put in place by parliaments for gendering their symbolic function. A few negative examples are also discussed, as claims made or acted out in the absence of a conscious gender perspective are not inconsequential. The examples have been identified through a survey of the national – and some regional – parliaments of member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) along with the European Parliament. Such a broad sample includes both presidential and parliamentary systems whose level of gender equality significantly varies – for example, while Iceland occupies position #1 in the Global Gender Gap Report, Japan occupies position #121 (World Economic Forum (WEF), 2019). The share of women MPs ranges from 48% in Mexico and 47% in Sweden to 12% in Hungary and 10% in Japan (IPU, 2020).

This comprehensive overview fundamentally draws on parliaments’ websites, including policy documents, debates, motions, resolutions, press notes, educational materials, information on artwork and exhibitions in the parliamentary building, as well as on the online content that allows identifying the symbolic activities carried out within and by the institution. These primary sources are combined with reports produced by international organisations and secondary literature, including earlier work by the author. In presenting the examples, the primary actors engaged in symbol-making activity on behalf of a parliament are identified. When available, quotes given by symbol-makers in interviews with the media, press notes or parliamentary documents are provided to help reveal the intention underlying the institutional claims.

Existence of Childcare Facilities

Most parliaments are located in historic buildings that lacked the presence of women MPs over a long period, explaining why the uses given to spaces have tended to mainly cater to the needs of men. As Lovenduski (2014: 18) notes, ‘provisions for hanging up one’s sword but none for looking after one’s child’ in the UK House of Commons speak volumes of the bodies who are seen as the legitimate occupants of parliamentary seats, as did the shooting range in the basement of the House of Lords – in place between 1916 and 2015. As of 2019, fewer than half of the European Union member states’ lower houses have childcare facilities (EIGE, 2019: 22). Therefore, most parliaments still convey the idea that their occupants are individuals with no caring responsibilities fully dedicated to their representative role.

However, in some parliaments, there is a long tradition of facilities to assist members as working parents. In the early 1980s, the Canadian House of Commons, under the leadership of former Speaker Jeanne Sauvé, established its own childcare centre – The Children on the Hill. The German Bundestag makes its kindergarten service available to the staff, and the Scottish Parliament’s crèche service – that is, ad hoc short-term childcare – is available to visitors (Mackay, 2014: 560). The legislatures of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Wales as well as the European Parliament have family spaces, breastfeeding areas or play rooms for children whose parents have meetings in the afternoons (Childs, 2017: 9; OECD, 2014: 47).

The symbolism of setting up childcare facilities in a parliament can be captured by former speaker John Bercow’s words upon the inauguration in 2010 of the UK House of Commons’ first nursery, housed in a space that had previously been home to a bar: ‘Our Parliament has sadly been behind the times in providing practical support to parents who work here. If Parliament is to be truly representative of the community it serves, then it must do more to encourage parents to stand as MPs’.² In a similar vein, upon the inauguration of a family room in the parliament’s ground floor, the president of the Swiss lower house Isabelle Moret noted that when she moved to Bern over a decade ago with her 2-month-old daughter ‘young children had to be smuggled into the parliament building’. This personal experience encouraged her to make the reconciliation of work and family life a key focus of her political activity, claiming that ‘young parents and their children should feel welcome here’.³

Scholars can also examine whether formal regulations or informal arrangements grant MPs permission to bring their infant children onto the floor of the chamber during a sitting. MPs have been permitted to breastfeed in the Australian Senate since 2003 and in the Australian House of Representatives since 2016 (BBC News, 2017), whereas in the UK House of Commons, the ban was only lifted in 2020 by speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle (Woodcock, 2020). In both cases, the decision was adopted following a campaign run by women MPs from various parties.

Policies to Enhance the Gender Sensitivity of Physical Spaces

Only 18% of national parliaments in the European Union have policies that seek to enhance the gender sensitivity of physical spaces (EIGE, 2019: 24). Ethnographic analyses can explore the gender biases underpinning the allocation of office space or other seemingly trivial issues that, nonetheless, might produce discomfort in a parliamentary workplace. The latter include, for example, the UK House of Commons’ long benches, where MPs have to sit very close to one other or the fact that the chamber acoustics favour loud voices, which is likely to pose a barrier to an equal participation of women MPs in debates (Lovenduski, 2005: 147). Also, air conditioning systems in parliamentary chambers tend to be set at a temperature that responds to men’s physiological needs and dress codes – that is, suits and ties (Verge et al., 2019: 154).

Other forms of symbolic exclusion manifest in the lack of a women’s locker room in recreational spaces, such as the gym at the US Congress (Kitchener, 2019). Furthermore, most parliaments tend to have an equal number of toilets for men and women (Childs, 2017: 9), although women use them more often (menstruation, pregnancy, etc.) and spend longer in them (more complex clothing, added time for entering and locking stalls, etc.). Gender-blindness in this domain might thus neglect women’s needs even in recent reforms, such as that of the Canadian parliament (Lowe, 2019). Similarly, there tends to be an under-provision of gender-neutral toilets, a demand made by the transgender community that could also be helpful for fathers with daughters, mothers with sons and adults with disabled relatives (cf. Childs, 2016: 38). In the Swedish parliament all toilets are gender-neutral, and some legislatures, such as the Australian, the Catalan, the Danish, the Finnish or the European Parliament, have made gender-inclusive the toilets that are accessible for disabled people (Childs, 2017: 8). These decisions are typically made by the equipment and services departments involved in running the parliamentary buildings, although gender-focussed reference groups can also provide instructions in this regard. To further assess whether gender norms about care are being reproduced by the infrastructure, attention can be paid to in which toilets baby changing stations are located.

Room Entitlements in the Parliamentary Building

Gender biases in room entitlements can be measured by counting the number of rooms named after men and women leaders or historical figures along with historical events or cultural features centred around women/men or femininity/masculinity. The rules or procedures aimed at ensuring gender balance when naming parliamentary spaces are scarce in the national parliaments of the European Union (EIGE, 2019). In the case of the European Parliament, while in Strasbourg, the visitor centre is named after Simone Veil, the first woman president of the chamber, and the main parliamentary building is named after the renowned feminist, author and politician Louise Weiss, most spaces are still named after male figures (EIGE, 2019: 22).

When a gender perspective is lacking, biases are perpetuated. For instance, in the recent extensions to the Brussels complex, the Bureau of the European Parliament only named one of the three new buildings – the parliament’s press room – after a woman (the assassinated Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya). Likewise, following suggestions from MPs, the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body named in 2010 six rooms after historical figures who had made significant contributions to Scotland, featuring only one woman.⁴ Similarly, in 2008, seven rooms that had traditionally been identified by numbers in the Spanish Congress of Deputies were renamed after the rapporteurs of the 1978 constitution, all of them former male MPs (El Confidencial, 2008).

Symbolic Meanings of Paintings and Decorations

The extent to which decorative schemes (paintings, sculptures, etc.) in parliaments over-represent one gender and the way men and women are portrayed can be explored through aesthetics. Generally, they contain gendered messages and stories about the country’s past that may make women and ethnic minority MPs and citizens feel as though they are ‘strangers’ (Rai and Spary, 2019: 20; see also Puwar, 2004). For instance, in the Parliament of Catalonia, self-government is symbolised by the statue of a mother lifting up her newborn baby with a caption reading: ‘The birth of the statute of autonomy’ (Verge et al., 2019: 156). A gendered distribution of artwork is also commonly found. For example, in the German Bundestag only 10 out of the 45 pieces of artwork exhibited are authored by women artists.⁵

Parliaments can redress these biases. In 1989, following a five-party motion that pinpointed ‘that almost all portraits, sculptures and busts in the building were of men’ (Freidenvall and Erikson, 2020: 635), the Swedish Riksdag decided that there should be a room exclusively featuring paintings of women produced by female artists, which was inaugurated in 1994 and has thereafter been expanded with stories, pictures and films.⁶ The shortage of works produced by women in parliamentary buildings might also be compensated by either borrowing women artists’ pieces from public museums and private collections or by hosting temporary exhibitions of women’s artists, as done by the Parliament of Catalonia (Verge et al., 2019: 157). Legislatures can also ‘celebrate the contributions and roles of women to many areas of life’ through feminist artwork, such as the ‘Travelling the distance’ collection of handwritten sentences made in porcelain by 100 women, located on the ground floor of the Scottish Parliament.⁷

Existence of Women’s Rooms

Lack of women’s recognition in room entitlements and decorations has led some parliaments to create specific rooms that deliberately seek to re-present women. In 2012, the Speaker’s Gender Equality Group of the Swedish Riksdag decided to redecorate such a room, the Kvinnorummet or Women’s Room, with pictures of the first women MP, minister, party leader and speaker (Freidenvall and Erikson, 2020). With the goal of celebrating women’s political leadership and encouraging young female visitors to follow in their footsteps, the room includes a mirror with a caption that reads: ‘This could be you’. Similarly, in 2016 the Italian Chamber of Deputies inaugurated the ‘Sala delle Donne’, which displays pictures of 21 pioneer women politicians. On a blank wall, three mirrors symbolise the political offices that have never been held by a woman to date (President of the Republic, the Senate and the Council of Ministers), and below the mirrors female visitors can read: ‘You could be the first’.⁸ In the New Zealand Parliament, the ‘Women’s Suffrage Room’, a select committee room, has since 1996 showcased on its walls the portraits of all women MPs who have served since 1933, as well as several artworks commemorating women suffragists – New Zealand was the first country to give women the vote in 1893. The Commonwealth Women’s Parliamentarians group, in collaboration with the parliamentary services, recently redesigned this room with portraits of the first Māori woman MP and the three women Prime Ministers. The claim of representation was made explicit by Jacinda Ardern, the country’s current Prime Minister, in the official opening of this room: ‘It is one thing to bring women into Parliament (. . .); it is another to create an environment where women can be who they are, and we make them feel safe to be the leaders they feel comfortable being’.⁹

Gender Equality in the Parliament’s Channels of Communication

An increasing number of legislatures have a specific section on parliaments’ websites that addresses gender equality, although they still remain in the minority (EIGE, 2019: 23). For example, the websites of the lower houses of France, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, the Netherlands or New South Wales (Australia) provide a separate list of women MPs and/or a description of the history of women in politics in the country. Some of these websites also showcase information on gender equality events, such as celebrations of the anniversary of women’s right to vote (see below for further information). The website of the Austrian lower house also includes information on the share and positions occupied by women in the parliamentary services. Yet only a few parliaments (Austria, Catalonia, Switzerland and the United Kingdom) have an extensive section in their websites devoted to parliament and women/gender. They present the gender equality legislation passed by the legislature, the initiatives implemented for improving equality in the parliamentary workplace, and the public outreach activities targeting women (see below for further information). The existence of a tag or banner on the website’s homepage with information about the institution’s anti-harassment policy, which would allow legislatures to signal that such misconducts are not tolerated in their workplace, is only found in a very small number of legislatures, such as the Scottish and the Welsh parliaments.

Analyses can also measure the proportion of news items or tweets issued by the parliament that concern women or gender equality initiatives and examine whether digital debates are initiated on specific topics related to gender equality. For instance, the UK parliament’s public engagement service invites citizens to use a Twitter hashtag to make their contributions a few days before an actual parliamentary debate, during which MPs refer to the online contributions. Examples of debates of this sort launched by the Women and Equalities Committee are diversity in STEM – #WomenInSTEM – or maternity discrimination – #MothersWork (Leston-Bandeira and Walker, 2018: 310).

Gender-Sensitive Official Communications Policy

Scholars can use content analysis to examine whether the language used in parliaments’ documents, press releases, websites or official social media is gender-sensitive. The way in which actions in the linguistic domain may produce representative claims can be illustrated by this excerpt from the European Parliament’s (2018: 9) gender-sensitive language guide, produced by the linguistic and administrative services at the request of the High-Level Group on Gender Equality and Diversity: ‘Parliament is committed to gender equality and non-discrimination on gender grounds. The use of gender-sensitive language is one of the ways of implementing this commitment’. The supra-national legislature recommends the use of ‘a gender-neutral/gender-fair/non-sexist use of language, so that no gender is privileged, and prejudices against any gender are not perpetuated’ (European Parliament, 2018: 3).

The New Zealand Parliamentary Counsel Office has also developed a style guide with specific requirements on gender-neutral language, including the names of functions and roles – for example, replacing the term ‘chairman’ by ‘chairperson’ or ‘presiding person’ (New Zealand Parliament, n.d.). Gender-sensitive guidelines can be used in grammatical gender languages, too. The Slovenian parliament uses both the male and female version of the term ‘parliamentarian’ in all communications (OECD, 2019: 168), and in Chile the double form ‘diputadas [f.] y diputados [m.]’ has been integrated into the parliament’s official name, following a motion passed by the Committee on Women and Gender Equity. According to the then-Vice-president of the chamber Loreto Carvajal, this change ‘reinforces the idea that MPs have to legislate with a gender perspective’ (El Mostrador, 2020).

Analyses of official communications can also measure the presence of women in the parliament’s news and in the share of men and women MPs who appear in the videos that summarise plenary and question time sessions. In addition, analyses can look at whether the imagery used by parliaments in their website and social media accounts defaults to generic photos of men or aims at portraying diversity. More generally, scholars can examine whether legislatures make gender-sensitive data of parliamentary processes publicly available. For instance, the Parliament of Catalonia reports the gender gap in speech time at each plenary session.¹⁰

Gender Balance in Delegations, Events and Awards

The extent to which parliaments avoid all-male panels when planning their events can be analysed by requesting data from the parliamentary services on whether women and men participate in equal numbers as panellists in the public events held in the parliament, as well as by examining if the institution has established any formal or informal rules in this regard. Similarly, the share of men and women MPs that make up parliamentary delegations (in visits to other parliaments, businesses, etc.) inevitably sends a message about who is worthy of representing the institution.

The extent to which parliaments strive for gender balance can also be analysed in the awarding of medals and other types of recognitions. The merits that are considered award-worthy highlight both the social and political relevance that the institution grants to a cause and the visibility given to certain groups. For example, only about 20 of the almost 200 individual Congressional Gold Medal awarded by the US lower house have recognised women for their contribution to American history and culture, although recent recipients include the four African-American women who worked at NASA during the so-called ‘space race’. On their part, the Mexican upper and lower houses have instituted civic merit medals that appraise the fight for women’s rights. Candidates are nominated by civil society organisations and their merits are evaluated by the Gender Equality Committee; the decision is then voted on by the plenary of the chamber. In the judgement of the Committee on Rules of Procedure to include this medal in the lower house standing orders in 2018, its chair proclaimed: ‘This award is a message to society that women’s fight to overcome the injustices they face is a priority for this parliament’ (Cámara de Diputados de México, 2018).

Gender Equality in Public Outreach Activities Targeting Women

Researchers can assess, on one hand, whether parliamentary information and educational materials have been reviewed from a gender perspective. As already mentioned, gender-sensitive language and the diversity of the imagery used in these materials can contribute to eroding the association of politics with masculinity. For example, the Parliament of Catalonia revised its educational materials to diversify the protagonists of the images and to provide data on the evolution of the share of women MPs in the legislature (Verge et al., 2019: 166), and the Swedish Parliament has produced educational materials about universal suffrage.¹¹

On the other hand, scholars can examine if public outreach activities exist that seek to engage women voters. Examples of actions on this symbolic plane abound in the UK Parliament. In 2018, on the centenary of The Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act, which gave women the right to stand for election to the Commons, MPs invited women into parliament as part of the #Askhertostand campaign (Childs and Challender, 2019: 428–429).¹² On the occasion of International Women’s Day in 2019, the Commons issued a series of short videos to celebrate the work of all the female chairs of select committees, in which each explained the area covered by her committee and how its work matters for women and gender equality (UK House of Commons, 2019). The Scottish Parliament, for its part, under the sponsorship of presiding officer Linda Fabiani, has created the mentoring programme Young Women Lead in collaboration with YWCA Scotland focussed on ‘address[ing] the underrepresentation of young women in politics’. This programme connects young women with MPs, the Government Equality Unit and the parliament’s digital and engagement staff.¹³ The Community Outreach Team of the Scottish Parliament has also set up guidelines to encourage social organisations to take diversity into serious consideration when choosing committee witnesses. As pointed out by the head of this department in the foreword of these guidelines:

Those watching from outside may see this [lack of diversity among MPs and witnesses] and feel that participation in democracy is not for ‘people like me’. (. . .) [W]e have a crucial role in leading the way, demonstrating that people from all backgrounds and experiences can contribute their views and expertise to public life (Scottish Parliament, 2019: 2).

Gender Equality Initiatives for the Public

Guided tours describing the history of women in the parliament or exhibitions about key female figures are common gender equality initiatives for the public (IPU, 2011: 72). This is also the case of exhibitions that celebrate the hundredth anniversary of universal suffrage, as the one opened in Westminster Hall (‘Voice and Vote: Women’s Place in Parliament’) in June 2018 or in the Irish Oireachtas in July 2018. As claimed by senator Ivana Bacik, chairperson of the Irish Vótáil 100 Committee, the exhibition aimed at ‘encourag[ing] more women to become politically involved’.¹⁴ Quite often, legislatures also organise conferences or workshops on gender equality on their premises that are open to the general public or to women’s associations. These workshops are organised by the parliamentary committees on women/gender equality, as for example in the European Parliament, the Portuguese or the Colombian lower house, while in other parliaments such sessions tend to be promoted by the Speaker’s Office or by gender-focussed reference groups, as is the case in the Swedish and the Catalan parliaments.

A prime example of representative claim-making through initiatives that seek the engagement of women’s organisations is Women’s Parliaments, an event that gathers sitting female MPs and social activists. They have been held within the OECD region in Mexico – in the federal lower house (in the late 1990s and early 2000s) and in some state legislatures (in the last 2 years) – and Catalonia. As stated in the Bureau agreement, the Parliament of Catalonia (2019a) sought to evoke that ‘[it] is firmly committed to women’s empowerment’ and that it seeks ‘to strengthen the linkage between women MPs and women’s associations, and to facilitate the participation of the latter in the agenda-setting process’. Other events might not be open to the general public, but are also important for showcasing the wish to act as a role model institution, such as the organisation of inter-parliamentary conferences aimed at exchanging good practices on the gender sensitivity of legislatures (Childs and Challender, 2019: 429; Erikson and Verge, 2020: 13).

Engagement with Ongoing Societal Campaigns on Women’s Rights

Parliaments can engage in representative claim-making about gender equality through institutional declarations or resolutions on women’s rights. Typically, these require cross-party consensus in order to be approved, so regardless of who promotes the declaration – that is, an individual MP or a parliamentary party group – it is parliament as an institution that ultimately positions itself. These pronouncements tend to be made on the occasion of key dates, such as International Women’s Day (8 March) and the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women (25 November). Through discourse analysis researchers can examine whether women are presented as victims or as the subjects of rights, what role is attributed to the women’s movement, and the extent to which the diversity of women’s needs and interests is acknowledged.

Institutional stances may also be issued in reaction to specific events. For example, since 2015, as per initiative of the former speaker Carme Forcadell, when a femicide occurs in Catalonia, at the beginning of the plenary session of the chamber, a statement condemning it is read out, followed by a minute’s silence (Verge et al., 2019: 159). In her words, the goal is to:

keep the memory of the victims alive; stand by all women who suffer gender-based violence, making it clear that they are not alone; express the parliament’s commitment to keep working for gender equality; and call for the involvement of society as a whole in the eradication of gender-based violence (Parliament of Catalonia, 2020: 100).

Some parliaments have also engaged with the feminist global campaign #MeToo, which is not alien to the political field. For example, in 2017, the Swedish Parliament held a public seminar in which women MPs and ministers read out anonymous statements by female politicians who had been sexually harassed in various political parties (IPU, 2018: 13), and in 2019, the Norwegian legislature participated in the #NotInMyParliament initiative¹⁵ launched by the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly following the publication of the study Sexism, Harassment and Violence against Women in Parliaments in Europe (IPU, 2018).

Other parliaments have actively supported the strikes organised in the last few years by the women’s movement. In June 2019, the then-president of the Swiss lower house Marina Carobbio paused the plenary session for 15 minutes to express parliament’s solidarity with the Women’s Strike for equal pay, recognition of unpaid care work, and political representation. As Carobbio claimed, ‘Parliament’s recognition and sensitivity to this Women’s Day was important’. She also added that ‘if through this I can help get more women elected in the next national elections, I will’ (Kappeler, 2019). Similarly, the spokespersons of all parliamentary party groups of the Catalan legislature unanimously passed a declaration in support of the feminist strike of 8 March 2019. Besides expressing the chamber’s support to all women staffers who joined the strike, it praised ‘women from previous generations who have fought for gender equality as well as the feminist movement and its contributions’ (Parliament of Catalonia, 2019b).

Expected Impact of Gender-Sensitive Claim-Making on Targeted Audiences

The overview of the broad range of activities that legislatures are undertaking to enhance their symbolic representation of women and gender equality indicates that numerous actors have engaged in gender-sensitive symbol-making activity within and by parliaments, as Table 2 summarises. The intention of speakers, parliamentary committees, the parliamentary services, gender-focussed reference groups, cross-party women’s caucuses and other types of non-partisan permanent or ad hoc groups is inextricably linked to the impact that gendering the symbolic function is expected to have on those who witness the symbols from outside the parliamentary space (external audiences) and on those who are present within it (internal audiences). Indeed, a key element of the symbolic representation of parliaments is that symbols need to be perceived as such by audiences (Rai, 2010: 294; Saward, 2006: 302), who may (re)interpret them in different ways, with historical, cultural and socio-political contexts also shaping their reception (Leston-Bandeira, 2012: 516).

Table 2.

Gendering the Symbolic Function of Parliaments.

Indicators	Examples of activities	Symbol-makers	Expected impact
The symbolic meaning of physical spaces
Existence of childcare facilities	Crèches, family spaces, breastfeeding areas or play rooms for children	Parliamentary services; gender-focussed reference group; speaker	Signalling that women and, more generally, parents are valued among parliaments’ workforce and elected representatives
Policies to enhance the gender-sensitivity of physical spaces	Gender-inclusive toilets	Parliamentary services; gender-focussed reference group	Increasing women’s sense of ownership of and fit into the institution
Room entitlements in the parliamentary building	Rooms named after women politicians	Parliamentary services; cross-party action
Symbolic meanings of paintings and decorations	Redecoration with paintings of women or female artists’ work	Cross-party action; gender-focussed reference group	Shaping positive public views about the role of women in politics, eroding the association between masculinity and public institutions
Existence of women’s rooms	Rooms showcasing women’s advancement in political office	Gender-focussed reference group; speaker
The symbolic in communications and public outreach
Gender equality in the parliament’s channels of communication	Section on women/gender equality in the parliament’s website	Gender equality committee; gender-focussed reference group; parliamentary services	Making gender equality a visible part of parliaments’ institutional identity
Gender-sensitive official communications policy	Gender-sensitive language guides; gender-neutral names of functions	Gender-focussed reference group; parliamentary services	Fighting gender stereotypes, diversifying role models in the political sphere, and bolstering women’s political engagement
Gender balance in events, delegations and awards	Gender-balance in civic merit medals and medals that appraise the fight for women’s rights	Gender equality committee; speaker
Gender equality in public outreach targeting women	Mentoring programmes; instructions to diversify witnesses	Parliamentary services; speaker
Gender equality initiatives for the public	Workshops on gender equality; universal suffrage exhibitions; Women’s Parliaments	Gender equality committee; gender-focussed reference group; speaker	Raising social awareness on gender inequality, gendering the political agenda, and according the women’s movement an enhanced political legitimacy
Engagement with ongoing societal campaigns on women’s rights	#NotInMyParliament campaign; support to womens’s strikes	Gender equality committee; gender-focussed reference group; cross-party action; speaker

In the domain of physical spaces, the symbolic activities seek to erode the association between masculinity and public institutions. Setting up childcare facilities can ‘signal to the outside world that, just like other “best practice” employers, [a parliament] values parents among its workforce and will act practically to support them’ (Childs, 2016: 22). Hence, by improving the gender sensitivity of spaces parliaments emphasise that women fit in the institution. The adoption of gender-sensitive policies for room entitlements in the parliamentary building aims at increasing women’s sense of ownership of the institution, while redecorations and setting up women’s rooms seek to shape positive public views about women’s role in politics. Regarding communications and public outreach, the systematic dissemination to the public of the parliament’s work on gender equality serves the purpose of better reflecting and giving visibility to where the institution stands on this issue (IPU, 2016: 28), making gender equality a visible part of the institutional identity, while outlining the historic presence of female MPs on the institution’s website draws attention to the fact that women have been and are relevant political actors, thereby diversifying role models (Krook and Norris, 2014: 13). The language and imagery used in a parliament’s documents, including information and educational materials, contribute to ‘enact[ing] cultural change’ (Krook and Norris, 2014: 17) by fighting gendered stereotypes. Likewise, public outreach efforts that target women’s organisations and parliaments’ engagement with broader public campaigns on women’s rights accords an enhanced political legitimacy to the women’s movement (Verge, 2020: 20). Also, organising events on gender equality on the parliamentary premises highlights the political and social importance that the institution gives to it and helps make society at large aware of the causes and effects of inequality (EIGE, 2018).

Examples of gender-sensitive symbolic activity have hardly been identified in the parliaments of countries with poor performance in gender equality indexes, suggesting that conscious efforts to enhance the symbolic representation of women and gender equality on behalf of the institution are more likely to be found where levels of women’s descriptive and substantive representation are higher. This does not imply, though, that symbolic representation is a by-product of these other two dimensions, as illustrated by the fact that the first Women’s Parliament was held in the Mexican lower house in 1998 when the share of women MPs was around 17% and gender equality and gender-based violence laws had not been passed yet. Likewise, the mentoring programme of the Scottish Parliament has targeted young ethnic minority women precisely because they are heavily under-represented in the legislature.

Therefore, this study confirms that symbolic representation is ‘integral to descriptive and substantive representation’ (Rai, 2017: 506). Ultimately, the three dimensions intrinsically build onto each other (Lombardo and Meier, 2014: 30; Verge, 2020: 27). For instance, signalling that staff and MPs with children are welcome in the parliament or launching campaigns that seek to enhance the political engagement of women may encourage female citizens to come forward as candidates while increasing the retention of sitting women MPs (Erikson and Verge, 2020: 10; Krook and Norris, 2014: 13). Simultaneously, calling for witness diversity in the work of parliamentary committees and portraying the institution as a key site for the advancement of women’s rights may provide more diverse inputs to parliamentary work and contribute to translating social campaigns into legislative action. Similarly, Women’s Parliaments embody descriptive representation meanings through their all-women composition, challenging the somatic norm of which bodies belong to parliament. This event also elicits substantive representation meanings through performances and discourses that promote new ideas regarding equal and fair representation, which may enable parliaments to transform their political agenda in a feminist direction (Verge, 2020: 21).

Although the analysis of the reception and interpretation of symbol-making activity falls beyond the scope of this article, the remainder of this section outlines how these issues can be empirically examined. When it comes to broad external audiences such as the general public, while indicators of public disengagement might well lead parliaments to enhance their symbolic function, there is no straightforward measurement of whether the activities undertaken have contributed to redressing the trend (Judge and Leston-Bandeira, 2018: 167). Commonly used questions in public opinion surveys about trust in parliament constitute a very distant proxy, as multiple factors explain individual levels of this feeling (Leston-Bandeira, 2012: 522). Simultaneously, parliaments can keep track of participation levels in public engagement and outreach activities and examine its demographics, but ‘usage does not reflect effect on attitudes’ (Leston-Bandeira and Walker, 2018: 310). In the case of specific outreach stakeholders – for example, women’s organisations – researchers can either design specific surveys or conduct focus groups and interviews to grasp whether the symbols put forth by the institution have been taken up as conveying a sense of representing substance and authenticity (Verge, 2020: 23–25). Moreover, since the media is likely to be an intended audience of representative claim-making due to their symbol-handler role (Judge and Leston-Bandeira, 2018: 168), scholars can run content or thematic analysis of news stories to identify whether and how a parliament’s symbolic activity is disseminated and appraised (Verge, 2020: 25–27).

Regarding internal audiences, interviews with MPs and staff from the parliamentary services can help assess their (re)interpretations and perceived impact of the institutional claim (Judge and Leston-Bandeira, 2018), paying attention to whether the symbols are differently acknowledged by male and female actors (as well as by feminist and non-feminist actors). These sources of information can also be used to examine if the institutional claims are perceived to have challenged existing gender roles within the legislature or reinforced them, which may occur when women are symbolically represented as deviant from the male norm or when gender equality is associated exclusively to women rather than to society at large. Finally, given that the process of making claims may lead symbol-makers to construct a new view of themselves (Saward, 2006: 305), through documentary analysis researchers can trace the extent to which the symbolic activities undertaken have shaped the institution’s self-presentation or identity. For instance, the organisation in 2019 of a Women’s Parliament by the Parliament of Catalonia led the parliamentary committee on Equality to attach the word ‘Feminisms’ to its name, and in 2020 all sitting women MPs unprecedentedly came together at the end of the plenary session on the occasion of International Women’s Day to chant long live the feminist struggle (Verge, 2020: 22). The Catalan legislature has also increasingly used the hashtag #FeministParliament on its Twitter account when disseminating to the public the institutional initiatives that seek to further gender equality.

Conclusion

This article has developed an analytical framework to study how parliaments as institutions develop their symbolic function, particularly how they engage in the symbolic representation of women and gender equality through multiple institutional claim-makers. Drawing on examples of legislatures from around the world, it has illustrated the indicators that can be used in the empirical investigation of the symbolic activities that aim at gendering their self-presentation in the domains of physical spaces and communications/public outreach. This study thus exposes that measuring gender equality in parliaments exclusively through the descriptive and substantive dimensions does not fully account for the efforts legislatures can make to enhance women’s representation. Besides showcasing that symbolic representation can be examined as a dimension in its own right, the article corroborates that, rather than being a passive dimension, it does co-constitute descriptive and substantive representation. Furthermore, the identification of the expected impact of gender-sensitive claim-making on both insider and outsider audiences contributes to theorising what it actually means to stand for a constituency or a social group on behalf of a parliament beyond the classic principal–agent relationship established between citizens and MPs. Overall, this work contributes to various strands of scholarship, including political representation, parliaments, and gender and politics.

Single-case and comparative studies could help determine whether the symbol-making activities reviewed here are one-shot events or partake a broader strategy to enhance the gender sensitivity of parliaments. Scholars could also explore under what institutional, political and cultural conditions the symbolic representation of women and gender equality carried out by legislatures is enabled or resisted, and identify which symbolic activities have been cross-loaded to a greater extent across parliaments. Moreover, given that symbolic re-presentations can be ‘selective and exclusive’ (Lombardo and Meier, 2019: 241), in-depth analyses could examine whether symbol-making on behalf of the institution adopts an intersectional approach that takes women’s diversity into account. Attention can also be paid to which other traditionally under-represented social groups’ parliaments target in their symbolic activity. Finally, researchers may explore whether and how the general public, women citizens and the women’s movement acknowledge and appraise the gender-sensitive representative claims and whether the latter effectively impact on the public perception of the institution.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to Petra Ahrens and to the three anonymous reviewers whose constructive feedback strengthened the final version of the article.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Tània Verge

Notes

Author Biography

Tània Verge is Full Professor of Politics and Gender at Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Her research focuses on how political parties and parliaments are patterned through gender.

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