Understanding Female Legislators’ Substantive Representation in the Australian Parliament

Abstract

Female legislators are typically assumed to act for other women when policymaking. Contemporary literature challenges this, and a need to “tow the party line” complicates the process of attributing acts of substantive representation vis-à-vis policy to any individual political actor. Using 1,047 private member’s bills tabled in the Australian federal parliament (1995–2022), we address this limitation by employing a quantitative text analysis approach. We find gendered differences in the propensity to propose such bills across parties and over time. Further, our analysis reveals that substantive gender differences in legislation extend beyond linguistic variations to distinct thematic concerns. These findings underscore the role of gender but also other biographical and contextual factors in shaping legislative priorities, contributing to ongoing debates about the substantive representation of women in policymaking.