The Substantive Representation of Women: Rethinking the ‘Critical Mass’ Debate

Sarah ChildsSenior Lecturer

Department of PoliticsUniversity of Bristol

10 Priory RoadBristol BS8 1TUUnited Kingdom

s.childs@bristol.ac.ukTel: 011 44 117 331 0835Fax: 011 44 117 331 7500

and

Mona Lena KrookAssistant Professor

Department of Political ScienceWashington University

Campus Box 1063One Brookings DriveSt. Louis, MO 63130

U.S.A.mlkrook@artsci.wustl.edu

Tel: (314) 935-5807Fax: (314) 935-5856

Paper presented at the Midwest Political Science AssociationNational Conference, Chicago, IL, April 20-23, 2006.

1

The Substantive Representation of Women:

Rethinking the ‘Critical Mass’ Debate

A central question in research on women and politics – as well

as in activism both for and against increases in the number of female

officeholders – is whether or not women can be said to represent

women once in political office. As few legislatures consist of equal

proportions of women and men,1 many scholars and activists invoke

the concept of ‘critical mass’ to explain why women appear to make a

difference in some contexts but not in others, arguing that women are

unlikely to have a major impact on legislative outcomes until they

grow from a few token individuals into a considerable minority of all

legislators. They reason that as the numbers of women grow, women

will be able not only to work more effectively together for women-

friendly policy change, but also to influence their male colleagues to a

greater extent to accept and approve bills promoting women’s

concerns. Although the concept of ‘critical mass’ has been interpreted

and applied in many different ways over the last twenty years, it has

gained wide currency among politicians, the media, and international

organizations – as well as activists and researchers – as a justification

for measures to bring more women into political office.2 Nonetheless,

it has recently been subject to increased criticism as scholars have

discovered several relationships between numbers of women and

passage of legislation beneficial to women, finding that women make a

2

difference even when they form a very small minority,3 or

alternatively, that a jump in the proportion of women actually

decreases the likelihood that individual female legislators will act on

behalf of women as a group.4 These developments have precipitated a

crisis of confidence in ‘critical mass theory,’ leading many to question

its continued utility and relevance as a concept in research on the

substantive representation of women.5

Viewing this crisis as an opportunity to develop a better model

of gender and political representation, we trace the genealogy of

‘critical mass’ to assess its advantages and limitations as a tool for

understanding women’s legislative behavior. We begin by probing the

origins of the concept in the classic contributions of Rosabeth Moss

Kanter,6 who outlined three expectations regarding the impact of

increased proportions of women on group life, and Drude Dahlerup,7

who popularized the term in the study of women and politics but

ultimately discarded it in favor of analyzing ‘critical acts.’ We then

review applications and critiques of their work and find that these

studies often fail to reflect the totality of their original expositions.

More specifically, this literature frames ‘critical mass theory’ as if

Kanter made only a single claim about women’s behavior and as if

Dahlerup made a strong case in favor of the critical mass concept. As

such, many authors test and reject ‘critical mass theory’ using

evidence that, although they do not recognize it, is in fact consistent

3

with Kanter’s second and third expectations and Dahlerup’s notion of

critical acts. To resolve these tensions and inconsistencies, we

propose two means for rethinking this debate that revive the original

ideas of Kanter and Dahlerup but significantly extend them in light of

more than twenty years of research on women’s substantive

representation: (1) reformulating the central research question from

when women make a difference to how the substantive representation

of women occurs, and (2) refocusing the investigation from the macro-

level (i.e., what do ‘women’ do?) to the micro-level (i.e., what do

specific women do?).

These two moves, we argue, open up a series of new

possibilities for analyzing legislative behavior. Reviewing the gender

and politics literature, we identify five elements that merit further

consideration – and, indeed, explicit dis-aggregation – when seeking

to understand women’s substantive representation: (1) anticipated

effects of increased proportions of women, (2) constraining and

enabling features of legislative contexts, (3) identities and interests of

female and male legislators, (4) feminist and non-feminist definitions

of ‘women’s issues,’ and (5) stable and contingent features of policy-

making processes. To provide a guide for subsequent research, we

‘unpack’ these five dimensions and then draw on the literature in

sociology on tokenism, thresholds, and collective action to reclaim and

extend elements in the work of Kanter and Dahlerup that introduce

4

greater contingency with regard to the behavior of individual women.

Such an approach calls attention to the diverse possibilities within

each category that are masked by traditional interpretations of

‘critical mass theory,’ which condense and simplify aspects of

legislative behavior in ways that restrict the meaning of ‘acting for

women,’ as well as assume uniform motivations across a potentially

diverse population of female legislators. We systematize these insights

into a template for situating the contributions and claims of individual

studies that sheds light on the dynamics at work in particular cases,

as well as takes the first steps towards fostering more cumulative and

comparative research on women’s substantive representation. Placing

concrete actors at the center of analysis, the resulting lens signals a

more complicated relationship between ‘critical mass’ and ‘critical

actors’ that undermines any simple correlation between numbers of

women and ‘women-friendly’ policy outcomes.

The Origins of the Critical Mass Concept

The debate on ‘critical mass’ in women and politics research can

be traced back to three seminal works, two by Kanter8 and one by

Dahlerup,9 which respectively analyze the experiences of women who

form small minorities in the corporate and political spheres. Although

both authors are concerned primarily with how women respond to

5

dynamics of marginalization in minority situations, each concludes

with some speculations as to how these experiences will change as

the number of women increases. These latter ideas form the nucleus

of the critical mass concept as it has been taken up by subsequent

researchers, who have in turn transformed the possibilities signaled

by Kanter and Dahlerup into firmer expectations about the behavior of

women according to ‘critical mass theory.’ To separate their

contributions from these later interpretations, we review their

arguments to establish the precise nature of their predictions

regarding women’s behavior as the proportion of female legislators

grows. We then highlight shortcomings and ambiguities in their

formulations which may in fact be responsible for confusion among

other scholars in order to later evaluate the scope and limits of their

work for advancing the debate on the substantive representation of

women.

Rosabeth Moss Kanter on ‘skewed’ and ‘tilted’ proportions and

group life

Kanter examines women’s token status in a large American

corporation in the 1970s and observes that the “relative numbers of

socially and culturally different people in a group” – differences which

derive from “salient master statuses” like sex, race, and ethnicity10 –

6

are “critical in shaping interaction dynamics” in group life.11 To this

end, she constructs a typology consisting of four distinct majority-

minority distributions: uniform groups with one significant social type,

at a ratio of 100:0; skewed groups with a large preponderance of one

social type, at a ratio of perhaps 85:15; tilted groups with a less

extreme distribution of social types, at a ratio of perhaps 65:35; and

balanced groups with a more or less even distribution of social types,

at a ratio of 60:40 to 50:50.12 Although she argues that as the

numerical proportions within a group “begin to shift so do social

experiences,”13 her empirical evidence derives from a study of only

one of these four groups, a case where the ratio of men to women is

skewed in men’s favor, as her primary concern is to uncover “what

happens to women who occupy token statuses…in a peer group of

men.”14 In these skewed groups, she argues, the numerically many –

or “dominants” – “control the group and its culture,” while the

numerically few – or “tokens” – are reduced to symbolic

representatives of their social category.15 Due to their minority status,

tokens are subject to greater visibility within the group, leading

dominants to stress intra-group differences in ways that compel

tokens to conform with dominant models while also suffering

stereotypes in line with these perceived differences.16 These

tendencies in turn generate three particular challenges for token

individuals: performance pressures, which require them to

7

overachieve or limit their visibility;17 token isolation, which forces

them to remain an outsider or become an insider by being a ‘woman-

prejudiced-against women’;18 and role entrapment, which obliges

them to choose between alternative female stereotypes like the

mother, the seductress, the pet, or the iron maiden. As a consequence

of these dynamics, tokens – even if they are two together – find it

difficult to “generate an alliance that can become powerful in the

group.”19 Thus, in the absence of greater numbers capable of creating

a “counterculture,” tokens are left with “little choice about accepting

the culture of dominants.”20 Tokenism in this manner becomes self-

perpetuating: rather than paving the way for others, it reinforces low

numbers of women, leaving outside intervention as the only means for

increasing their presence.21

Reflecting on how these dynamics might change in the

transition from a skewed to a tilted group, Kanter makes three

conjectures regarding women’s behavior as the perceptions of

dominants and the responses of tokens take on new forms. The first is

that “with an increase in relative numbers, minority members are

potentially allies, can form coalitions, and can affect the culture of the

group while the second is that “with an increase in relative numbers,

minority members begin to become individuals differentiated from

each other.”22 Together, these two claims suggest that women in tilted

groups are able to evade performance pressures and token isolation,

8

which had previously prevented them from forming coalitions with

other women, as well as escape role entrapment, so that they can

pursue interests that may not conform with female stereotypes.

Kanter offers no insights as to which scenario will prove most likely,

but simply signals two possibilities whose direction ultimately

depends on the choices of individual women. This sense of

contingency similarly pervades her third intuition regarding a change

in absolute numbers, despite a lack of change in relative numbers:

“two…is not always a large enough number to overcome the problems

of tokenism and develop supportive alliances, unless the tokens are

highly identified with their own social group.”23 This claim implies that

even when the number of women remains low, the presence of

“feminist” or “women-identified-women” can reduce performance

pressures, token isolation, and role entrapment if the particular

women involved form coalitions.24 Thus, as she argues in the case of

balanced groups, the characteristics of individual women become

paramount because group dynamics “depend on other structural and

personal factors.”25 Nonetheless, her acknowledgment that two tokens

can easily “be divided and kept apart” leads her to add the

qualification that “it would appear that larger numbers are necessary

for supportive alliances to develop in the token context.”26 All the

same, her contention that feminists are central to women-friendly

9

outcomes suggests that numbers may in fact matter less than the

presence of ‘women-identified-women.’

While these dynamics share certain parallels with the

challenges faced by women in politics, their application to the study of

women’s political representation is limited in several ways. First,

Kanter investigates the experiences of token women in corporations,

not women as minorities in political institutions. She thus examines

how proportions affect tokens’ abilities to fulfill their roles as

employees, where job performance is related to economic efficiency

and assessed daily by superiors in the job hierarchy. This contrasts

with legislators, whose job priorities remain the prerogative of

individuals and political parties and are judged on a multi-year basis

by voters.27 Even if business and politics share certain features in

common – like “cultural traditions and folklore” that shape how

members “manage relations” between internal and external actors28 –

Kanter’s research does not in fact speak to the question of whether or

not female legislators will seek to ‘act for’ women.29

Second, she is unclear about “tipping points,” or the moments

when groups move from “skewed to tipped to balanced.”30 Although

her ratios of “up to” 85:15, “perhaps” 65:35, and “60:40 down to

50:50” mark qualitative distinctions among groups, her diagrams

suggest a continuous scale.31 Furthermore, because the percentage

point differences between these categories are large, particularly

10

between the skewed (85:15) and tilted (65:35) groups, this ambiguity

generates opposite predictions regarding ‘in-between’ proportions

and their implications for group interaction: the first reading indicates

that groups with proportions like 80:20 and 75:25 should be

categorized as skewed, since no change can occur until the ratio is

65:35, while the second suggests that such groups are on their way to

being tilted, as they are moving up a continuum.

Third, Kanter explicitly removes gender from her analysis by

arguing that “rarity and scarcity, rather than femaleness per se…

shaped the environment for women in the parts of [the corporation]

mostly populated by men.”32 Indeed, she claims that relative numbers

“can account for any two kinds of people regardless of the category

from which the token comes.”33 At the same time, however, she relies

upon gendered analysis to make sense of her observations: her

description of the dynamics of tokenism stems from an appreciation of

how women’s gender ‘master status’ is displayed and reproduced on

and through women’s bodies, especially in sections where she points

out how sexual innuendos serve to exclude and demean female

tokens.34

Fourth, given her lack of an explicitly gendered lens, she leaves

the role of men in these situations under-analyzed. While she does

recognize that men who are not used to interacting with women are

often “more confused than hostile,” she also notes several who are

11

“openly angry” and simply do not know how to interact with a woman

who is not their wife or their secretary because they went to “all-male

technical schools.”35 These reactions cannot be understood without a

prior theory of patriarchal gender relations, and in glossing over them

Kanter underplays the potential for backlash against women in

occupations “normatively defined as men’s work.”36 As such, her

saleswomen may feel the “negative effects not of their small numbers

but of their increasing numbers.”37 Because she views skewed groups

as largely self-perpetuating, however, Kanter’s lack of attention to

men’s reactions is understandable: she simply does not have the

empirical material to theorize in any firm way how male and female

behavior will change in the transition from skewed to tilted groups.

Drude Dahlerup on small and large minorities of women in

politics

Dahlerup extends Kanter’s analysis to the study of women in

politics, at least partly in response to the growing tendency among

female politicians in the mid-1980s to refer to the notion of ‘critical

mass’ when describing the limits on their possibilities to ‘act for’

women. Skeptical of the appropriateness of this metaphor for

understanding political behavior, she draws on Kanter to consider how

the performance pressures for saleswomen compare with those for

12

female politicians, who must prove that they are “just like (just as able)

as male politicians” but also that “it makes a difference when women

are elected.”38 She thus adopts an explicitly gendered perspective that

emphasizes how women’s minority position in politics relates to their

minority group status in society through “over-accommodation, sexual

harassment, lack of legitimate authority, stereotyping, no

considerations for family obligations…[and the] double standard,”

which are the “combined consequence of the minority position and

women’s status in a patriarchal society in general.”39 Seeking to tailor

Kanter’s insights to the political realm, she then identifies six areas

where women might have an impact in politics: reactions to women

politicians, with a decline in sexist treatment and sexual harassment;

the performance and efficiency of female politicians, with fewer women

leaving politics; the social climate of political life, with the arrival of a

more consensual style and family-friendly working arrangements;

political discourse, with a redefinition of ‘political’ concerns; the policy-

making agenda, with a feminization of the political agenda; and the

influence and power of women in general, with the broader social and

economic empowerment of women.40

Although careful to adapt Kanter’s work, however, Daherlup

only partially represents the change in interaction dynamics as a

group moves from skewed to tilted to balanced. She argues:

13

“in the tilted group (‘with ratios of perhaps 65:35’, Kanter

writes, from her figure, however, from 15 to about 40), the

minority is becoming strong enough to influence the culture

of the group, and alliances between minority group

members become a possibility.”41

With this single sentence, Dahlerup transforms the ‘critical mass’

debate in two ways with important implications for later research on

the substantive representation of women. First, she focuses

exclusively on the opportunity for women to form supportive alliances

when there is an increased number of women, overlooking the

possibility that women as a group will grow more diverse as their

numbers grow, as well as the chance for women to have an impact

even when they constitute only a very small minority of all political

representatives. Second, she inserts a new definition of tilted groups

as those where the proportion of women ranges between 15 and 40

percent, meaning that they occupy all the space between skewed

(85:15) and balanced groups (60:40). At the same time, she defers to

common usage of the term ‘critical mass’42 and identifies 30 percent

as the crucial cut-off point for gauging the impact of women in

Scandinavian politics,43 even though a strict reading of Kanter would

categorize such a group as skewed, not tilted or balanced. In light of

her re-formulation, Dahlerup concludes that available empirical

evidence simply does not support a relationship between specific

14

percentages of women and changes in each of her six areas. She

suggests that factors beyond numbers – especially those that are

impossible to isolate or control, like broader shifts in societal attitudes

– might go further in explaining both change and lack of change

following the advent of more women to political office.44

Developing this, Dahlerup argues that the specific mechanisms

for change lie in “critical acts,” or initiatives that “change the position

of the minority and lead to further changes.” These acts include the

recruitment of other women, the introduction of quotas for women,

and new equality legislation and equality institutions,45 and depend

crucially on “the willingness and ability of the minority to mobilize the

resources of the organization or institution to improve the situation

for themselves and the whole minority group.”46 In entertaining this

possibility, Dahlerup implicitly revives Kanter’s third claim that

feminist women can have an impact above and beyond their token

status if they form alliances with one another despite their small

numbers. All the same, she overlooks Kanter’s second claim – despite

her observations regarding the importance of party identities in

dividing women’s loyalties – by underplaying the importance of

differences among women and how these might prevent coalitions

among them when they are present at higher or lower numbers.47

Still, Dahlerup remains guarded in her predictions when she links

critical acts to larger proportions of women by stating that a “growing

15

feminist consciousness among a growing number of women politicians

could mean that women are reaching an important turning point,

becoming a critical mass.”48 In her view, therefore, critical acts, the

work of individuals, precede but do not necessarily lead to a critical

mass, a larger group whose influence inevitably leads to dramatic

political change. This shift in focus thus transforms the optimistic

outcomes implied by the notion of ‘critical mass’ into a much more

contingent future in which outcomes depend closely upon the actions

of particular individuals.

While a central contribution to the debate on the substantive

representation of women, the multiple strands and occasional

inconsistencies in Dahlerup’s argument easily foster a range of

distinct interpretations about whether – and in what ways – numbers

matter.49 When she discusses changes in the reaction to female

politicians, for example, she writes that “the presence of women

politicians in great numbers does make it seem rather hopeless to try to

remove women from the public sphere today. So numbers do count.”

She elaborates by explaining that “following the growing number of

women in politics, stereotyping decreases, because so many different

types of women now occupy the political arena.”50 She then adds,

however, that “it is not possible to conclude that these changes follow

from any fixed number of women, e.g. 30 percent.” Rather, “the

example of just a few successful women in top positions…may have

16

contributed substantially to the change in the perception of women as

politicians,” leading her to conclude that “in such cases it is not

numbers that count, but the performance of a few outstanding women

as role models.”51 She presents similar arguments across the five other

areas that combine individual and collective explanations by switching

between statements like “the entrance of just one woman into an all

male group…changes the discussion and behavior of that group” and

the “higher the proportion of women, the more social conventions will

change.”52 As a result, she rejects ‘critical mass’ in favor of ‘critical

acts,’ but nonetheless concludes that “the opportunity for women to

form majority coalitions…increases when they constitute 30 percent,

rather than 5 percent,”53 an assertion that relies on an assumption

about numbers and outcomes that she ultimately rejects.

Applications and Critiques of ‘Critical Mass Theory’

Interested in analyzing women’s legislative behavior, many

subsequent scholars draw on the work of Kanter and Dahlerup in

order to understand why the increased presence of women in

legislatures does not always translate into women-friendly policy

outcomes. Reviewing this literature, we find that – following Dahlerup

– many reduce Kanter’s three expectations into one, anticipating that

increased numbers will facilitate coalitions among women, rather than

17

acknowledging that this may also lead to greater diversity among

women and that change may occur even when women are few.

Similarly, we discover that nearly all frame Dahlerup’s work as if she

had made a strong case in favor of the critical mass concept, when in

fact she rejects ‘critical mass’ in favor of ‘critical acts.’ Given the

strong consistency across these accounts, we characterize these

misrepresentations as ‘critical mass theory,’ recognizing that even if

these accounts distort the work of Kanter and Dahlerup, these ideas

play a central role in organizing research on the substantive

representation of women. To this end, we examine both applications

and critiques of ‘critical mass theory’ and find that while the former

adopt Kanter’s first claim and Dahlerup’s notion of ‘critical mass,’ the

latter present evidence that corroborates the second and third claims

of Kanter and the idea of ‘critical acts’ introduced by Dahlerup. These

patterns indicate a fundamental disjuncture between the work of

these two authors and how it is represented in ‘critical mass theory,’

suggesting the need to rethink traditional views of the relationship

between the descriptive and substantive representation of women.

The politics of optimism and applications of ‘critical mass

theory’

18

Applications of ‘critical mass theory’ draw on the concept to

explain a range of different outcomes, most obviously instances where

increased numbers of women result in greater attention to women’s

issues, but also cases where increased numbers of women result in

little or no change, on the grounds that women may not yet constitute

a ‘critical mass.’ These studies assume that the percentage of women

in the institution is the key determinant of their behavior. As such,

they reflect a ‘politics of optimism’ that gender differences can be

eliminated and, especially, that women’s progress can proceed on a

non-conflictual basis, provoking little or no reaction from men as a

group.54 Empirically, these accounts find that legislatures with high

proportions of women introduce and pass more bills on women’s

issues than their female counterparts in low representation

legislatures.55 Further, they discover that as the number of women

increases, the number and rate of enactment of such bills also

increases,56 including as a total proportion of the total legislation they

introduce.57 They explain these changes in terms of the more

supportive legislative environment produced by the presence of more

women, which leads even those who do not view themselves as

representatives of women or women’s issues to be drawn into the

process.58 This work thus focuses exclusively on opportunities for

women to form coalitions with one another, anticipating that a

19

‘critical mass’ of women will be sufficient to promote women-friendly

policy outcomes.

The limits of proportions and critiques of ‘critical mass theory’

1 The national legislatures that come the closest to equal numbers are

Rwanda with 48.8% women and Sweden with 45.3% women. The

current world average for the lower house of parliament, however, is

16.6% women (Inter-Parliamentary Union 2006a; Inter-Parliamentary

Union 2006b).

2 Grey 2004; Krook 2005.

3 Crowley 2004.

4 Carroll 2001.

5 Childs 2004; Tremblay and Sawer forthcoming. The substantive

representation of women may take place in multiple sites (Weldon

2002) – for example, within women’s movements, political parties, and

women’s policy machineries – but in this paper we focus exclusively

on women in elected political office.

6 Kanter 1977a; Kanter 1977b.

7 Dahlerup 1988.

8 Kanter 1977a; Kanter 1977b.

9 Dahlerup 1988.

10 Kanter 1977a, 966; Kanter 1977b, 208.

20

Critiques of ‘critical mass theory,’ in contrast, focus primarily on

cases where policy change does not occur, even as the numbers of

women in the legislature reach ‘critical mass’ proportions, identified

in both literatures at levels ranging from 10% to 40%.59 This second

set of authors is thus much more skeptical of the magic of numbers

and attempts instead to delineate the various boundary conditions

that may prevent women from pursuing reforms addressing women’s

concerns. Focusing on the limits of proportions, they call attention to

the opportunities and constraints that stem from political party

affiliation,60 legislative committee membership,61 institutional norms,62

legislative inexperience,63 and the external political environment,

11 Kanter 1977a, 965; Kanter 1977b, 239.

12 Kanter 1977a, 966.

13 Kanter 1977b, 207.

14 Kanter 1977a, 968.

15 Kanter 1977a, 966.

16 Kanter 1977a, 971-972.

18 When differences between token and dominant groups are

emphasized, tokens are often subject to loyalty tests where being “one

of the boys” means being against “the girls” (Kanter 1977a, 979).

19 Kanter 1977a, 966.

20 Kanter 1977b, 231.

21 Kanter 1977a, 998; Kanter 977b, 210, 233-237, 241-242.

21

including the electoral system.64 Although these structures are strong

in and of themselves, these scholars argue, they are compounded by

potential for backlash, which generally increases as the number of

women rises.65 For this reason, women may actually be more effective

when they are fewer, as they can mobilize individually66 or through

22 Kanter 1977a, 966.

23 Kanter, 1977a, 987.

24 Kanter 1977b, 238.

25 Kanter 1977a, 966.

26 Kanter 1977b, 238.

27 Bratton 2005.

28 Beckwith 2002.

29 Mateo Diaz 2005.

30 Kanter 1977b, 237.

31 Kanter 1977a, 967; Kanter 1977b, 209.

32 Kanter 1977b, 207.

33 Kanter 1977a, 972; Kanter 1977b, 6.

34 Kanter 1977a, 968; cf. Thomas 1994.

35 Kanter 1977b, 42.

36 Yoder 1991, 188.

37 Yoder, 1991, 185, emphasis in original; cf. Considine and

Deutchman 1996.

38 Dahlerup 1988, 279.

22

women’s legislative caucuses67 to achieve gains for women without

having to contend with the opposition of powerful men. As such, they

reject ‘critical mass theory’ but in fact provide empirical support for

diversity among women, mobilization despite small numbers, and

potential for ‘critical acts’ at all levels of descriptive representation.

39 Dahlerup 1988, 279, emphasis in original.

40 Dahlerup 1988, 283-295.

41 Dahlerup 1988, 280.

42 Dahlerup 1988, 276, 280, 296.

43 Dahlerup 1988, 281.

44 Dahlerup 1988, 276-278.

45 The distinction between ‘critical mass’ and ‘critical acts’ is

sometimes conflated in the literature. In their rebuttal of the ‘critical

mass hypothesis,’ for example, Studlar and McAllister (2002) in fact

test a ‘critical act,’ the recruitment of more women.

46 Dahlerup 1988, 296, emphasis in original.

47 Dahlerup 1988, 293.

48 Dahlerup 1988, 293.

49 These inconsistencies are resolved in an interesting way in

Dahlerup’s later work with Lenita Freidenvall, where they argue that

critical mass dynamics do not characterize countries that have

followed an ‘incremental track’ to increased representation, like the

Nordic countries, but might characterize countries that have followed

23

From ‘Critical Mass Theory’ to the ‘Substantive Representation

of Women’

a ‘fast track’ thanks to the use of quotas (Dahlerup and Freidenvall

2005).

50 Dahlerup 1988, 285.

51 Dahlerup 1988, 287.

52 Dahlerup 1988, 290.

53 Dahlerup 1988, 294.

54 Blum and Smith 1988.

55 Bratton 2005; Thomas 1991; Thomas 1994.

56 Saint-Germain 1989; Skard and Haavio-Mannila 1985.

57 Vega and Firestone 1995.

58 Flammang 1985.

17 In skewed situations, everything that a token woman does attracts

public notice such that her actions have symbolic consequences for all

women. In such a context, many women seek to limit their visibility by

amongst other things “adopting ‘mannish dress’” (Kanter 1977a, 974).

59 Beckwith and Cowell-Meyers 2003; Childs 2004; Towns 2003; Grey

2002; Lovenduski 2001; Norrander and Wilcox 1998; Thomas 1994;

Thomas and Welch 1991. This more critical literature, however, is

24

The concept of critical mass has thus informed a substantial

proportion of research on women and politics, but has come under

greater scrutiny in recent years as scholars have uncovered a diverse

set of relationships between the numbers of women elected to

political office and the passage of legislation beneficial to women as a

group. These patterns point to the need to address the uses and limits

of this concept – as well as its growing body of criticisms – in order to

assess its relevance for future work on gender and political

much more open than earlier studies to multiple ways of

operationalizing ‘critical mass,’ although this openness probably

derives from attempts to delineate its boundary conditions through

the exploration of non-linear and exponential operations (cf. Bratton

and Ray 2002; Celis 2004; Grey 2002; Schwindt-Bayer and Mishler

2005).

60 Childs 2004; Poggione 2004.

61 Frisch and Kelly 2003; Norton 1995; Swers 2004.

62 Dodson 2001a; Considine and Deutchmann 1996; Kathlene 1995;

Kenney 1996; Mackay 2001; Rosenthal 1998.

63 Beckwith 2002; Cowley and Childs 2003; Jeydel and Taylor 2003.

64 Swers 2004; Tremblay 2003.

65 Kathlene 1995; Towns 2003; Yoder 1991; cf. Heath et al 2005.

66 Crowley 2004.

67 Reingold 2000; Thomas 1991; Towns 2003.

25

representation. Drawing on a range of observations in existing

studies, we suggest two means for rethinking this debate: (1)

reformulating the central research question from when women make

a difference to how the substantive representation of women occurs,

and (2) refocusing the investigation from the macro-level (i.e., what do

‘women’ do?) to the micro-level (i.e., what do specific women do?).

Combined, these two shifts reorient the discussion away from

determining the exact conditions under which women’s presence

alters political outcomes towards exploring variations in how

individual politicians – both male and female – perceive and negotiate

the act of representing women. This revised approach, we contend,

not only relaxes overly restrictive analytical frames regarding the

form and content of ‘acting for women,’ but also offers greater

leverage for investigating whether or not an increase in the numbers

of women in political office will translate into gains for women as a

group. By assuming greater contingency in the behavior of individual

women, it highlights the need to move away from traditional

methodological strategies by exposing the weaknesses of macro-

quantitative techniques and the strengths of micro-qualitative

analyses for developing a more complex model of women’s legislative

behavior.

Dimensions of the substantive representation of women

26

Reviewing the literature, we find that many scholars frame their

work as a test of ‘critical mass theory,’ but in supporting or disputing

its assumptions, most provide crucial insights into the varied and

complicated nature of the substantive representation of women. We

identify five elements that merit further consideration – and, indeed,

explicit disaggregation – when seeking to understand women’s

substantive representation. The first concerns anticipated effects of

increased proportions of women in political office. The most common

assumption is that as women grow more numerous in legislative

chambers, they will be increasingly able to form strategic coalitions

with one another in order to promote legislation related to women’s

concerns.68 A related belief is that a rise in the number of women will

influence men’s behavior in a feminist direction, causing both male

and female legislators to pay more attention to women’s issues.69 A

third popular expectation, however, is that the increased presence of

women will provoke a backlash among male legislators who, sensing a

threat, will employ a range of subtle and more obvious measures to

obstruct women’s policy initiatives and keep them outside positions of

power.70 For this reason, a fourth perspective suggests that women

will be more effective when they constitute a smaller proportion of

68 Flammang 1985; Thomas 1994.

69 Bratton 2005; Flammang 1985.

27

legislators, as they will be able to specialize in women’s concerns

without appearing to undermine male domination,71 although some

scholars take a slightly more benign view by pointing out that, in the

absence of a large proportion of women, a well-organized women’s

caucus may act as a functional substitute by coordinating the actions

of the few women in the legislature.72 A fifth take, finally, anticipates

that a rise in the overall number of women will result in the election

of an increasingly more diverse group who may or may not be

interested in pursuing women’s issues, either because their priorities

lie elsewhere or because they believe that other female legislators will

continue to lobby on behalf of women.73 These dynamics, some

contend, intensify the need for individual ‘equality champions’ who

will act as legislative policy entrepreneurs to motivate the support of

both overt and ‘closet’ feminists for women-friendly policy change.74

Studies that address the constraining and enabling

characteristics of legislative contexts similarly point to a multiplicity

of factors that limit and enhance opportunities for women to translate

70 Hawkesworth 2003; Heath et al 2005; Kathlene 1995; Towns 2003;

Yoder 1991.

71 Crowley 2004; Dodson and Carroll 1991.

72 Bratton 2005; Reingold 2000; Thomas 1994.

73 Carroll 2001; Schwindt-Bayer 2004.

74 Carroll 1984; Chaney forthcoming.

28

policy preferences into legislative initiatives on behalf of women.

Much of this research focuses on institutional rules and norms that

reflect a bias towards men’s experiences and authority,75 and as such,

compel women to conform to existing masculine legislative practices

in ways that undermine their ability to integrate women’s

perspectives into public policy-making.76 Some authors draw

attention, however, to other institutional rules and norms that

facilitate women’s participation,77 as well as women’s caucuses and

women’s policy machineries that, in certain cases, serve as effective

institutional channels for promoting women’s representation and

engender effective alliances.78 Several extend these observations to

positional power, noting that women generally do not occupy high

ranking posts in important legislative committees79 and often face

repeated challenges to their leadership when they do as a result of

gendered norms of power.80 Nonetheless, others point out that

women’s access to legislative committees enables them to influence

policy-making from an insider position that was previously

unavailable,81 although their relative ‘newness’ sometimes mitigates

their potential to influence policy due to their lack of legislative

experience.82

These dynamics, in turn, intersect with the impact of party

affiliation and ideology on women’s legislative activities. As various

scholars observe, mechanisms of candidate selection combined with

29

pressures for party discipline strongly determine what kinds of

women are elected,83 as well as the specific policy positions that they

are likely to take once they accede to political office.84 At the same

time, as this research notes, distinct party ideologies often create

different opportunities for women to pursue feminist policy concerns,

as right-wing parties tend to favor more traditional roles for women,

while left-wing parties are often more open to new and even multiple

gender roles.85 Consequently, the rise of certain parties to power

plays a crucial role in shaping the broader political climate that –

together with broader global trends like the rise of neo-liberalism86

and more local dynamics like military conflict,87 recent democratic

transition,88 and the presence or absence of strong women’s

movements89 – influences the emergence and resonance of women-

friendly policy concerns.90 As a few authors point out, however, these

effects are not necessarily uniform across all legislative spaces:

although women often form small minorities in broader legislative

chambers, at times they constitute larger minorities in party

delegations or committee rooms, where their increased numbers

enable them to have a greater impact on policy formation.91

Similar considerations pervade discussions of the identities and

interests of female and male legislators, as nearly all work on the

substantive representation of women addresses individual features

that facilitate and undermine cooperation among women in political

30

office. Notably, while many political theorists aim to discern or define

a shared perspective among women as a group in order to justify calls

for their increased political presence,92 most empirical studies stress

divisions among women – like race, class, age, and party affiliation –

that prevent the formulation of a collective legislative agenda.93 These

apparent cleavages among women lead some to argue that identity

categories like ‘women’ are inherently exclusionary and serve to reify

one difference while erasing and obscuring others.94 As such, ‘gender’

should be seen not as a pre-political and fixed identity that women

bring with them when they enter politics, but as an identity that is

partially produced and reproduced within the context of particular

legislatures.95 Other scholars simply question the elision of women’s

bodies with feminist minds, pointing out that being female may matter

less than ‘gender consciousness’ for achieving feminist outcomes,96 as

many women come to office for reasons related to more traditional

aspects of their gender identities, for example in their capacity as

mothers or as substitutes for their male relatives.97

These concerns overlap with debates on the need to establish

differences in the behavior of women and men in political office. While

some claim that women only have an impact when they do not act in

the same way as men,98 others explain convergence according to at

least four distinct scenarios: (1) women and men share the same

policy priorities, but diverge in terms of their support for, and

31

willingness to propose legislation on, feminist issues;99 (2) the

increased presence of women leads men to show more interest in

women’s issues, either to promote women’s autonomy or to restrict

advances in women’s status;100 (3) the presence of anti-feminist

women and pro-feminist men evens out the aggregate balance of

preferences across women and men as groups;101 and (4) ‘gendering’

processes silence women by pressuring them to conform to positions

taken by men on various political issues or by blocking their

opportunities to freely articulate their own views.102 While these

scholars search for the differences underlying these apparent

similarities,103 others insist that a continued focus on ‘difference’ has

certain discursive dangers because it retains an emphasis on women

as the sex with special interests and experiences,104 enabling

opponents to argue – on the basis of similarities – against any

increases in women’s representation,105 as well as placing undue

responsibility on the shoulders of individual women.106

Variations and ambiguities in terms of the ‘identities’ and

‘interests’ of legislators find further reflection in feminist and non-

feminist definitions of ‘women’s issues. Within the gender and politics

literature, scholars adopt various approaches that include policies

that increase the autonomy and well-being of women,107 concerns that

belong to the private sphere according to established views on gender

relations,108 areas where surveys discover a gender gap in the

32

population,109 and any issues of concern to the broader society.110

Taken together, these policies cover issues as diverse as abortion,

childcare, divorce, domestic violence, equal pay, equal rights, family

issues, parental leave, pensions, rape, reproductive rights, sexual

harassment, women’s health, and work/life balance; in other words,

those issues that achieve equality for women, address women’s

special needs, or enable women to undertake their traditional roles as

care-givers.111 Although some scholars prefer feminist definitions that

focus on role change for women through increases in autonomy and

the scope for personal choice,112 others opt for more inclusive ones

that capture a broader range of issues affecting women’s everyday

lives.113 Noting the context- and time-bound nature of ‘women’s

issues,’ yet others favor definitions based on the concerns articulated

by women’s movements at various moments in time, which allow

women’s issues to remain a priori undefined, context-related, and

subject to evolution,114 as well as a collective product that emerges as

women interact with other women to identify their priorities.115 This

perspective recognizes a broader range of ‘women’s issues’ that

includes those important to women in the developing world – like

access to water, child marriage, land ownership, inheritance, genital

cutting, and university admissions116 – and those central to many

women’s groups at earlier points in time, like suffrage, wage labor,

and widows’ benefits.117

33

The possibility to achieve gains for women also depends closely

on the stable and contingent features of policy-making processes,

which influence how and when women’s issues reach the legislative

agenda, as well as their ultimate prospects for being passed into law.

Most research on women’s substantive representation focuses on

stable features, finding that women as a group have the greatest

impact – or, more specifically, tend to differ most from men – in terms

of setting the legislative agenda and proposing new bills that address

issues of concern to women.118 For this reason, many criticize studies

that focus exclusively on legislative voting, as these not only assume

that enactment is the most important stage of the policy-making

process,119 but also overlook the fact that votes on many women’s

issues are not even included in the standard databases that collect

this information.120 Although some suggest that the best solution is to

examine the entire legislative process,121 others point out that policy-

making often involves numerous elements of contingency that make

such models appear overly simplistic. On the one hand, complex

combinations of factors – often in series of chance events – are

generally responsible for moving an issue to agenda prominence and

34

gaining its passage.122 On the other hand, policy innovations rarely

proceed in a vacuum, because policy cycles and demonstration effects

strongly condition which issues enter and are kept of legislative

agendas, separate from any assumed prerequisites for change.123

These possibilities, in turn, raise broader questions regarding the

definition of ‘policy impact’ itself, which in many cases extends to

arenas beyond policy-making, for example by leading to increased

political engagement among female constituents.124

Closer examination of these five dimensions – anticipated effects

of increased proportions of women, constraining and enabling

features of legislative contexts, identities and interests of female

legislators, feminist and non-feminist definitions of ‘women’s issues,’

and stable and contingent features of policy-making processes – thus

reveals multiple facets within what many scholars treat as relatively

straightforward categories of analysis. As such, it uncovers the

nuances that are lost when researchers focus on when women make a

difference rather than on how the substantive representation of

women occurs: while the former assumes relatively narrow

definitions, the latter presents a more fluid view of how actors,

interests, and outcomes combine to produce women-friendly policy

outcomes. Drawing on these five dimensions we outline a template for

future research (see Figure) that

– Figure 1 about here –

35

can facilitate a more constructive and focused debate by recognizing

the various configurations of conditions that may be consistent with

the substantive representation of women, as well as by structuring the

analysis of individual cases to situate particular claims and

contributions in relation to others. While this template reveals the

micro-level dynamics masked by a focus on macro-level patterns,

however, it does not explain how shifts in the numbers of women in

political assemblies translate more concretely into specific policy

outcomes. To investigate these processes, we revisit the contributions

of Kanter and Dahlerup with the help of insights from sociology to

develop a set of conceptual tools for analyzing ‘critical actors’ and

their part in policy change.

‘Critical actors’ and the micro-level dynamics of legislative

behavior

Research on ‘critical mass theory’ almost invariably truncates

and even fundamentally misrepresents the work of Kanter and

Dahlerup, at the same time that it provides a wealth of evidence

consistent with their other claims. These diverse possibilities in

women’s legislative behavior thus imply a more complicated and

contingent relationship between the descriptive and substantive

representation of women than is typically recognized by scholars or

36

activists. As such, they indicate a need for new theoretical tools for

opening up the ‘black box’ between the election of individual women

to political office and the passage of legislation beneficial to women as

a group. Seeking clues as to these dynamics, we explore contributions

that address the phenomenon of ‘critical mass’ in other areas of social

life, namely research on tokenism, thresholds, and collective action,

which together reveal how macro-level analyses distort

understandings of micro-level activities. We then revive Kanter’s ideas

about diversity among women and ‘women-identified’ women, as well

as Dahlerup’s notion of ‘critical acts,’ to theorize the conditions under

which individual legislators decide to ‘act for’ women, and especially,

how they come together to promote women-friendly policy change.

Although gender and politics scholars generally employ the

concept of ‘critical mass’ in a singular fashion – namely, to gauge how

increasing numbers of women affect legislative outcomes in a feminist

direction – studies in other fields examine the multiple ways in which

the dynamics of ‘critical mass’ influence collective behavior. Focusing

on the micro-level actions that account for puzzling patterns across

social aggregates, they theorize the contingent calculations of

individuals within these groups in order to explain why similar

distributions of preferences do not always translate into comparable

collective outcomes. Nonetheless, each tackles these questions from a

slightly different angle in terms of attention to individual versus sub-

37

group tendencies. Research on tokenism, for example, centers on the

mechanisms that compel minority individuals to conform to role

expectations based on group stereotypes. Although some authors

locate these structures in tokens’ lower social status outside the

group, which compound their minority status inside the group,125

others argue that tokenism relies upon individuals’ compliance with

the sent role expectations of the dominant majority. As a result, it

75 Considine and Deutchmann 1996; Hawkesworth 2003; Kathlene

1998; Kenney 1996.

76 Carroll 1984; Carroll 2001; Cowell-Meyers 2001; Dodson 2001a.

77 Chaney forthcoming; Kathlene 2001; Reingold 2000.

78 Squires and Wickham-Jones 2004; Thomas and Welch 1991; Towns

2003; Weldon 2002; Waylen 2004.

79 Heath et al 2005; Norton 1995.

80 Duerst-Lahti and Kelly 1995; Fairhurst and Snavely 1983; Kathlene

1995.

81 Dodson 1998; Swers 2002.

82 Beckwith 2002; cf. Cowley and Childs 2003; Childs and Withey 2006.

83 Chathukulam and John 2000; Gotell and Brodie 1991.

84 Cowley and Childs 2003; Geisler 2000.

85 Dodson and Carroll 1991; Erickson 1997; Reingold 2000; Swers

2004.

86 Grey 2004; Trimble 2004.

38

hinges on the extent to which one person accepts or rejects another’s

definitions, so although being in the minority position often leaves

tokens without a source of power with which to resist majority group

assertions, some individuals may be able to offer a competing vision

based on their own task relevant abilities. While such situations are

87 Beckwith and Cowell-Meyers 2003.

88 Waylen 2004.

89 Dahlerup 1986; Grey 2002; Lovenduski and Norris 1993; Thomas

1994; Weldon 2002.

90 Reingold 2000; Swers 2002.

91 Erickson 1997; Poggione 2004; Tremblay 1998.

92 Dovi 2002; Mansbridge 1999; Phillips 1995; Williams 1998; Young

2000.

93 Barrett 1995; Dodson 1998; Dodson and Carroll 1991; Swers 2002.

94 Carroll 2001; Fuss 1988; Spelman 1988.

95 Towns 2003; Whip 1991.

96 Childs 2001; Childs 2004; Reingold 2000; Tolleson Rinehart 1992;

Tremblay and Pelletier 2000.

97 Genovese 1993; Mehta 2002.

98 Cowell-Meyers 2001.

99 Dodson 2001b; Dodson and Carroll 1991; Jones 1997; Schwindt-

Bayer 2004; Swers 2004; Taylor-Robinson and Heath 2003; cf.

Conover 1988.

39

rare, they mean that tokens do not necessarily require a numerical

shift in order to reduce attention to their uniqueness and to acquire

power,126 suggesting that changes in group dynamics may occur even

in the absence of more minority members, at the same time that

increases in the numbers of tokens may bring about no change at all.

100 Bratton 2005; Norton 1995; Reingold 2000.

101 Chaney forthcoming; Tremblay and Pelletier 2000.

102 Hawkesworth 2003; Rosenthal 1998.

103 Cammisa and Reingold 2004.

104 Jónasdóttir 1991; Skjeie 2001.

105 Grey 2004.

106 Trimble 2004.

107 Bratton 2005; Tamerius 1995; Wängnerud 2000.

108 Meyer 2003.

109 Schwindt-Bayer 2004.

110 Dolan and Ford 1995; Mackay 2001.

111 Swers 2002.

112 Childs and Withey 2004; Dodson and Carroll 1991; Mezey 1994;

Oldersma 2002; Reingold 2000; Tremblay and Pelletier 2000; Trimble

2004.

113 Bayard de Volo 2003; Manasco 2005; Swers 2002.

114 Celis 2004.

115 Weldon 2002.

40

Studies of thresholds and human behavior, in contrast, frame

these individual decisions in terms of the proportion of others who

also choose to act, on the grounds that the costs and benefits of an

actor making a certain choice depend in part on how many others

decide to make that choice.127 For subjective reasons, however,

individuals view these costs and benefits differently and thus vary in

terms of how many others need to act before they do so themselves:

‘radicals’ have low thresholds, as they will act even if many others do

not, while ‘conservatives’ have high thresholds, as they will not act

unless many others do as well. These thresholds, moreover, may shift

depending on the density of friendship ties, as people might be

persuaded to act at lower absolute thresholds if a relatively high

proportion of their friends decides to act. Because thresholds are

116 Raman 2002; Tripp 2001.

117 Celis 2004; Meyer 2003.

118 Bratton and Ray 2002; Childs 2004; Swers 2004.

119 Tamerius 1995.

120 Norton 1997.

121 Carroll 1984; Carroll 2001; Dovi 2002; Norton 1995; Swers 2002.

122 Childs and Withey 2006; cf. Kingdon 1984.

123 Bratton and Ray 2002; Sawer 2004; cf. Finnemore 1993.

124 Atkeson 2003; High-Pippert and Comer 1998; Kudva 2003; Mackay

2001; but see Lawless 2004.

41

situation-specific, therefore, two groups may be identical in

composition but still experience distinct outcomes due to the

particular process of aggregation. As such, collective results do not

necessarily offer an accurate reflection of what individuals would do

in every situation; rather, the interaction of individual dispositions can

only be analyzed after behavior actually occurs.128 These models thus

separate attitudes from the ability and willingness to act on them,

offering crucial insight into situations where outcomes are not

consistent with individual preferences.

Similar notions pervade work on collective action, which places

the group at the center of analysis but theorizes action in terms of the

relations between various individuals inside the group. Seeking to

move away from accounts that view collective action as irrational on

the grounds that self-interested individuals would not act to further

group interests,129 these authors focus on interdependence among

actors, heterogeneity within groups, and the role of mobilizing agents

in order to explain how group members come together to realize

collective goals. They argue that in most instances collective action

occurs not as the result of the efforts of the average group member,

but rather through the work of a relatively small number of highly

interested and resourceful individuals, who either provide the

collective good themselves or play a central role in mobilizing

others.130 Given these distinct levels of commitment, the fact that

42

nothing happens does not indicate how near to being viable a certain

course of action is: because the ‘critical number’ for one person

differs from that of another, the definition of how many is ‘enough’

may vary from situation to situation.131 While highly motivated

individuals may be sufficient, therefore, they may not always achieve –

or need to achieve – widespread mobilization for collective ends.

Many of these ideas resonate with the original formulations of

Kanter and Dahlerup, who point to diversity among women and the

importance of individuals who resolve to act on behalf of women as a

group. For Kanter, a rise in the relative numbers of women enables

them to form alliances, at the same time that it permits them to

become individuals differentiated from one another. Similarly,

increases in their absolute numbers – in the absence of a change in

their relative numbers – generally divide women, but allow feminist

women to build coalitions with one another to overcome token

dynamics. For Dahlerup, initiatives to benefit women constitute

‘critical acts,’ which may be related to numbers of women in political

office, but which may also evolve separately them. These possibilities

are largely under-theorized in the work of each author, but do provide

some insights for conceptualizing how individuals decide to ‘act for’

women, both on their own and in conjunction with other women.

Adapting them, we distinguish between ‘critical actors’ and

‘critical mass’ in order to identify the concrete representatives – not

43

vague imperatives of ‘sex’ or ‘gender’ – who put in motion individual

and collective campaigns for women-friendly policy change.

Consistent with evidence from the broader literature, we argue that

‘critical actors’ are those who initiate policy proposals on their own,

even when women form a small minority, and embolden others to take

steps to promote policies for women, regardless of whether women

constitute a small or large minority of political representatives.

Indeed, they may not even be women: in some situations, individual

men may play a crucial role in advancing women’s policy concerns.132

These ‘critical actors’ take several different guises – other scholars

refer to them as ‘feminist activists’133 and ‘equality champions’134 – but

their common feature is their relatively low threshold for political

action: although they may hold attitudes similar to those of other

representatives, they are much more motivated than others to initiate

women-friendly policy reforms, often due to an element of ‘gender

consciousness’ that politicizes their view of the world.135 As with

definitions of ‘women’s issues,’ however, the specific characteristics

of ‘critical actors’ may vary across countries and over time in line with

evolving attitudes towards traditional gender roles, and thus their

actions may or may not conform with contemporary definitions of

‘feminism.’

Although ‘critical actors’ may operate alone, they may also

stimulate others to act, setting in motion a momentum for policy

44

change, or alternatively, provoking a backlash among those opposed

to fundamental reform. As such, their shape and impact are not

absolute, as smaller numbers of women may join together in

legislative caucuses to promote common goals with great success,136

while larger numbers may enhance the opportunity for critical acts

but may also foil their effects. These processes play themselves out in

two related ways within research on women and politics: the

activation of ‘closet feminists’ whose commitment to women’s issues

remains hidden from public view,137 and the politicization of women

who become feminists on the job in response to the neglect of

women’s interests in legislative institutions.138 Although these

analyses are limited to the feminist substantive representation of

women, they point to a moving target in all instances of

representation, as individuals are often transformed by their

experiences, such that their thresholds for collective action may

decrease following a policy success139 and may increase following a

policy failure.140

Given the unpredictable and often non-linear nature of ‘critical

acts,’ research that seeks to understand the dynamics of legislative

behavior – and thus get past the impasse of testing ‘critical mass

theory’ – must begin by examining micro-level interactions. To offer

robust insights that can be used to inform the study of other cases,

this approach requires that scholars engage in post-hoc analyses that

45

trace the behaviors of individuals over time in order to uncover the

respective roles of ‘critical actors’ and ‘critical mass’ in attempts to

carry out the substantive representation of women. Thus, while good

practice in political science generally involves employing multiple

methods, some techniques are more appropriate than others for

answering different types of research questions.141 For this reason, we

argue, scholars serious about generating insights into the complex

dynamics of ‘critical actors’ must abandon quantitative work that

infers micro-level preferences from macro-level patterns in favor of

qualitative studies that draw on micro-level behaviors to explain

macro-level results, at least in the short term. Although this approach

cannot establish when women will make a difference, its focus on

individuals opens a new avenue for research that recognizes diversity

rather than presumes uniformity across women’s legislative behavior.

As the number of such studies grow, scholars will then be able to

compare their insights and draw broader conclusions about the

substantive representation of women that nonetheless remain

sensitive to the details of individual cases at particular moments in

time.

Conclusions

46

In the context of growing concerns about the continued utility of

the concept in gender and politics research, this paper traces the

origins of ‘critical mass,’ as well as its uses and misuses in the

literature on ‘critical mass theory,’ in order to assess its strengths and

weaknesses as a tool for analyzing women’s political representation.

Seeking to clarify the terms of this debate, we undertake a close

reading of Kanter and Dahlerup to outline their precise predictions

regarding women’s behavior as the proportion of female legislators

grows. Although we highlight ambiguities and shortcomings in their

formulations, we argue that subsequent work fundamentally

misinterprets their contributions by framing ‘critical mass theory’ as if

both authors had made only one claim about the impact of rising

numbers of women, namely that they would enable women

increasingly to form supportive coalitions among one another to

promote feminist-oriented policy change. Informed by this revised

reading, we contend that research on gender and political

representation is better served by: (1) reformulating the central

research question from when women make a difference to how the

substantive representation of women occurs, and (2) refocusing the

investigation from the macro-level (i.e., what do ‘women’ do?) to the

micro-level (what do specific women do?). These two moves shift the

focus away from determining the exact percentage of women that

constitutes a ‘critical mass,’ or alternatively, identifying all the

47

possible variables that may mediate the impact of numbers. As a

result, they open up a series of new directions for analyzing legislative

behavior that discard uniform expectations about numbers and

political contexts, as well as strict definitions of the interests and

identities of female legislators. In this way, they answer criticisms on

the basis of essentialism that stress important differences among

women, as well as concerns about eliding feminism and women’s

political representation, by relaxing overly restrictive analytical

frames regarding the form and content of ‘acting for’ women.

We elaborate this approach by drawing on more than twenty

years of research on women and politics to outline five dimensions of

the substantive representation of women – related to anticipated

effects, legislative contexts, individual female legislators, women’s

issues, and policy-making processes – which reveal substantial

diversity within each category of analysis that needs to be taken into

account by scholars interested in explaining particular patterns of

political representation. We then advocate a conceptual shift from

‘critical mass’ to ‘critical actors,’ who are those who either initiate

reforms themselves or play a central role in mobilizing others for

policy change. Importantly, these ‘critical actors’ can exist in the

absence of ‘critical mass,’ as the concept is understood in ‘critical

mass theory,’ namely, that a certain percentage of women in political

office leads to the substantive representation of women. Nonetheless,

48

the dynamics of critical mass, as utilized by scholars from the wider

social science literature – and alluded to in the original contributions

of Kanter and Dahlerup – retain explanatory value in attempts to

understand women’s substantive representation. In particular, they

are relevant in situations where ‘critical actors’ solidify the resolve of

a larger group, who were not previously active in promoting policy

reform.

This revised approach has important methodological

implications, as it calls on scholars to replace traditional macro-level

studies that search for broad aggregate trends with micro-level

research that investigates more varied and contingent processes.142

Further, it highlights the need to pay close attention to attempts both

to influence the political agenda and to pass legislation as the

articulation of women’s concerns still constitutes attempts at

substantive representation even when these have little or no effect in

terms of legislative output.143 In making the case for more micro-level

analysis, however, we do not suggest that gender and politics

research should never undertake large-n studies. Rather, we propose

that in order for such studies to be robust and meaningful, scholars

need to engage in greater number of micro-level studies before they

seek to aggregate this information into a larger data set. Given the

bias in the existing literature toward developed countries, these

collective efforts must include greater attention to dynamics at work

49

in developing countries,144 especially those which have seen a

significant increase in the number of women elected through the use

of candidate gender quotas.145

Ironically, the misinterpretations that underlie ‘critical mass

theory’ have played a crucial role in the spread of gender quotas

around the world: international organizations, transnational networks,

party politicians, women’s activists, and even ordinary citizens argue

for 30 percent women in politics on the grounds that this figure

constitutes a ‘critical mass’ of female legislators.146 Given these

successes, activists are unlikely to give up on the concept any time

soon, because even if it is theoretically misguided, it has proved to be

a crucial tool for increasing the number of women elected to political

institutions. The perspective we develop in this paper exercises

greater caution: our approach retains some elements of the critical

mass concept, but by theorizing the importance of critical actors

seeks to establish its empirical limits. ‘Critical mass theory’, on the

other hand, should be firmly discarded: by debating only whether or

not women are more likely to form alliances when their numbers

increase, it has served to obfuscate – rather than clarify – the

complicated and contingent relationship between the descriptive and

substantive representation of women. While our arguments are not

the final word on the matter, they do seek to stimulate further debate

by outlining a new agenda for research that places concrete actors –

50

rather than abstract notions of ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ – at the center of

analysis.

51

Figure 1The Substantive Representation of Women: A Template for Analysis

1. Anticipated Effects of Increased Proportions of Women Women will form strategic coalitions with other women. Women will influence men’s behavior in a feminist or women-

friendly policy direction. Women will provoke a backlash among male legislators. Women will be less effective than at smaller proportions of

female legislators. Women will become increasingly more diverse as a group,

leading some to lobby on behalf of women and others to pursue other policy interests.

2. Constraining and Enabling Characteristics of Legislative Contexts

Institutional norms, especially in legislative practices Positional power, especially in legislative committees Political parties, especially in terms of party ideology Political climate, especially in terms of its relation to women’s

empowerment Legislative arenas, especially in terms varying distributions of

women and men in distinct legislative spaces3. Identities and Interests of Female and Male Legislators

Similarities and differences among women, especially race, age, party affiliation, and feminist identity

Similarities and differences between women and men, especially alternative conceptions of ‘similarity’ and ‘difference’ as the measure of women’s impact

4. Feminist and Non-Feminist Definitions of Women’s Issues Feminist definitions focused on role change for women, often

through increases in autonomy and scope for personal choice Non-feminist definitions focused on women’s traditional roles in

family and society Context- and time-bound features of these definitions

5. Stable and Contingent Features of Policy-Making Processes Stages in the policy-making process Legislative policy cycles and demonstration effects Impact within and outside the policy-making process

52

53

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Notes

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