Feodor Nagovsky and Matthew Kerby, “Political Staff and the
Gendered Division of Political Labour in Canada,” Parliamentary
Affairs, 24 August 2018.
Summary: While there is considerable research on elected legislators in a variety of contexts, the academic knowledge about their advisors is very limited. This is surprising, given a considerable portion of work attributed to legislators is performed by political staff. Further, political advising increasingly serves as a training ground for future politicians in many professionalised legislatures.
We use a mixed-methods approach to understand how the influence of men and women differs in political advising positions in the case of Canada’s House of Commons, and how this may affect women’s political ambition.
We demonstrate while close to an equal number of men and women work for MPs in a political capacity on Parliament Hill, men continue to dominate legislative roles while women continue to dominate administrative roles. Further, legislative work increases political ambition, which means more men benefit from the socialising effects of legislative work than women.
Marija Taflaga and Matthew Kerby, “Who Does What Work in a
Ministerial Office: Politically Appointed Staff and the Descriptive
Representation of Women in Australian Political Offices, 1979–2010”, Political
Studies, 19 June 2019.
Summary: Women are underrepresented within political institutions, which can (negatively) impact policy outcomes. We examine women’s descriptive representation as politically appointed staff within ministerial offices. Politically appointed staff are now institutionalised into the policy process, so who they are is important.
To date, collecting systematic data on political staff has proved impossible. However, for the first time we demonstrate how to build a systematic data set of this previously unobservable population. We use Australian Ministerial Directories (telephone records) from 1979 to 2010 (a method that can notionally be replicated in advanced democratic jurisdictions), to examine political advising careers in a similar manner as elected political elites.
We find that work in political offices is divided on gender lines: men undertake more policy work, begin and end their careers in higher status roles and experience greater career progression than women. We find evidence that this negatively impacts women’s representation and their later career paths into parliament.
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