Speaker: Amanda Clayton
Time: 12:00 pm- 1:00 pm CST
Venue: 206 Ingraham Hall
This in-person event will be livestreamed (Click here to Zoom in)
Talk Description
Gender quotas have been one of the most popular legislative reforms of the 21st Century. How do they change parliamentary behavior? We examine this question with the case of the Namibian Parliament. In Namibia, the ruling party abruptly adopted a gender parity quota, increasing women’s representation by 16 percentage points in one electoral cycle and dramatically changing the chamber’s composition. Using the complete parliamentary transcripts from 2004 to 2023, we examine how this leap in women’s presence changed both the tone and substance of legislative debates. Preliminary results indicate that the quota had little effect on gender differences in parliamentary power: men continue to dominate legislative debates in the post-quota period. In substance, the quota was followed by a relative decline in women’s propensity to mention women’s rights topics. Our results highlight how institutional reforms can transform the composition of the legislature while still leaving preexisting power structures intact.
Speaker’s Bio
Amanda Clayton is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. She studies representation, with a focus on gender and politics and a regional concentration in southern Africa. Her work has appeared in top political science and international relations journals and has been funded by the NSF, the Swedish Research Council, and USAID, among other groups. She is the co-founder and director of the Empirical Study of Gender (EGEN) Research Network.
This event is co-sponsored by the Department of Political Science, UW-Madison.
The event is free and open to the public.