2 - Piscopo, 2011

Parliamentary Affairs Vol. 64 No.
3, 2011, 448– 472

Advance Access Publication 3 March 2011
Rethinking Descriptive Representation: Rendering

Women in Legislative Debates1
BY JENNIFER M. PISCOPO
ABSTRACT
Downloaded from http://pa.oxfordjournals.org/ at Nanyang Technological University on June 6, 2015

This article addresses debates on identity and interest representation by re-concep-
tualising descriptive representation. The article revisits Pitkin’s original work,
arguing that descriptive representatives actively ‘stand for’ their constituents by
making claims about group members’ needs, circumstances and values. The utility
of this re-conceptualisation is explored by analysing parliamentarians’ speeches
supporting and opposing sexual health reforms in Argentina. Female legislators,
particularly those elected under quotas, will portray female constituents’ reproduc-
tive health needs through varied ideological prisms and narrative strategies.
Reformulating descriptive representation as ‘claim-making’ usefully sidesteps
debates about essentialism, recognises intra-group diversity, and establishes new
avenues for empirical analysis based on legislators’ public speeches and statements.
THE RECENT popularity of legislative quota laws has generated or

deepened public debates about the normative and empirical conse-
quences of bringing underrepresented groups into politics. In these
debates, representation appears conceptualised in three ways, following
the rubric of Hanna Pitkin: symbolic representation, wherein min-
orities’ inclusion in the legislature becomes emblematic of the political
system’s legitimacy and other traits; descriptive representation, wherein
legislators share ascriptive similarities with population subgroups; and
substantive representation, wherein legislators take policy actions that
serve their population subgroups.2 As quota laws are increasingly
applied to women’s candidacies, the scholarship on women in parlia-
ments has generally focused on the latter two concepts. Using Pitkin’s
terms, scholars explore how political institutions and sociocultural
norms change the level of women’s descriptive representation, and
whether female legislators substantively act for their ascriptive groups.
Quotas ideally deepen the descriptive representation of women as a
group and the substantive representation of women’s group interests.
These processes have important implications for the study of interest
representation in electoral democracies. First, they reflect significant
theoretical concerns about the linkages between identity and interests,
or how parliamentarians choose which constituent groups to favour
and which policies to support. Second, they present empirical puzzles,
Parliamentary Affairs Vol. 64 No. 3 # The Author [2011]. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the
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doi:10.1093/pa/gsq061
Rethinking Descriptive Representation 449
ranging from how to operationalise ‘group interests’ to how ‘much’

descriptive and substantive representation counts as ‘good’ for popu-
lation subgroups. Scholars studying women and politics typically count
the number of women in the parliament (to operationalise descriptive
representation) and then tabulate the chamber’s policy outputs (to
measure substantive representation). Broad comparative findings show
that, across cases, female legislators advance policy proposals and
achieve policy victories that address gender equality, marriage and
divorce, family formation and family leave, sexual and reproductive

health and violence against women.3 Yet, despite claims that female
legislators may transform politics in ways beyond changing statutes,4
few studies address changes not measured by counting representatives
and categorising policies.
This paper uses evidence not commonly found in the empirical lit-
erature on women’s representation—female legislators’ speeches in
chamber debates—to move beyond numbers and statutes. First, I argue
that scholars have too narrowly construed Pitkin’s concept of descrip-
tive representation. When Pitkin wrote that descriptive representatives
‘stand for’ constituents, she was referring not just to representatives’
numbers, but to their portrayals of constituents’ circumstances.
Revisiting Pitkin’s concept of descriptive representation as a ‘talking
function’ shifts scholarly attention to parliamentarians’ words, state-
ments and speeches. Second, I locate this shift within new theoretical
discussions about ‘representative claims’.5 What parliamentarians say
about group demands reflects, and may shape, the group’s identity,
values and roles in society. The nature of representative claim-making
remains an understudied, yet critical, aspect of interest representation.
Moreover, a focus on speech shows that parliamentarians can portray
group interests even when such interests are neither monolithic nor uni-
versally shared.
To illustrate these points, this paper proceeds as follows. I first
present a re-conceptualisation of descriptive representation, wherein
legislators resemble their constituents not through passively sharing
phenotypes, but through actively making claims. I then apply this
theory to the case of Argentina, where female legislators are elected
under a 1991 gender quota law. Choosing a quota case to explore
representatives’ claim-making behaviour offers several advantages.
Across the globe, women’s numbers in parliament range dramatically,
but countries applying gender quotas tend to elect more women.6
‘Quota cases’ therefore present a larger n and a greater likelihood of
finding meaningful variations on the dependent variable, which is
claims made by female legislators in their parliamentary speeches.
Similarly, scholars have theorised that quotas may accentuate women’s
representation, principally by creating a ‘mandate effect’ wherein
female legislators feel more obligated, and thus more likely, to speak
for women’s interests.7 For the Argentine case, I analyse female
450 Parliamentary Affairs
legislators’ plenary speeches on sexual health reform, a policy area

which clearly touches upon female constituents’ well-being. I show that
women’s increased numerical representation results in more descriptive
representation, that is, greater attention to female constituents’ policy
needs through varied ideological prisms and narrative strategies.
Theoretical expectations about descriptive representation

Authors in the political theory sub-field justify descriptive represen-
tation via its contribution to democratic fairness, believing that electing

members of historically disadvantaged subgroups deepens democratic
legitimacy.8 Empirically, scholars typically examine descriptive rep-
resentation via its effects on substantive representation. For instance,
Schwindt-Bayer and Mishler conceptualise descriptive representation as
the ‘compositional similarity’ of the legislature compared with the con-
stituent population, operationalising descriptive representation as the
per cent of women in the legislature and testing for policy effects.9
More recent theorising on descriptive representation has suggested that
the phenomenon include not just parliamentarians’ numbers, but their
characteristics—for the quality of the women elected matters as much
as the quantity.10 While investigating the traits of women elected will
usefully address fears that female legislators may be elites, puppets or
too homogenous to capably reflect the diversity among constituents,11
these research agendas do not fully capture Pitkin’s understanding of
descriptive representation.
Pitkin formulated descriptive representation using the words ‘stand-
ing for’. She wrote that what matters is ‘less what the legislature does
but how it is composed’: the more multifaceted the legislature, the
more the representatives will reflect the plural and varied viewpoints of
constituents.12 In Pitkin’s conceptualisation, descriptive representatives
give information about constituents to whom they are similar.13 She
argues that the descriptive characteristics of representatives allow them
to ‘render’ the opinions, needs and interests of the constituents they
resemble. A descriptive representative therefore serves a ‘talking func-
tion’. She gives information about her constituent group in the same
way a map gives information about freeways: the data usefully portrays
the real world, but without creating an exact replica. Pitkin further
explains that the descriptive characteristics represented, which lead to
the information rendered, must be politically relevant. When viewed in
terms of women’s entrance to legislatures, the descriptive represen-
tation of women means that female legislators will render the relevant
circumstances or conditions of the female population. Thus, the litera-
ture’s existing focus on descriptive representation as fairness and
numbers ignores the implications Pitkin’s theory has for the content
and nature of political debates.
This specification of descriptive representation alleviates many
anxieties raised by scholars of gender and representation. First, analysts
worry that descriptive representation will essentialise groups: female

legislators cannot represent women’s interests without assuming the a
priori existence of an ideal-type female citizen. Yet Pitkin’s formulation
of descriptive representation never demanded a universal identity for
group members. The labelling of descriptive representation as ‘mirror
representation’ often presumes an exact resemblance between legislator
and constituent that Pitkin did not demand. For Pitkin, all that descrip-
tive representation requires is an ‘in good faith’ rendering of a sub-
population’s circumstances. Group traits need not be exactly reflected,

nor stereotyped or homogenised, for rendering to occur. A female
descriptive representative is thus conceived neither as the cipher of uni-
versal womanhood nor as the embodiment of all possible woman-
hoods. Rather, she renders an aspect of ‘being female’ relevant to
current political discussions, providing generalised information about
women’s experiences, concerns or needs. Likewise, a freeway map will
never show all the different colours people paint their houses; the map
will, however, help the driver traverse the neighbourhoods. Descriptive
representatives, like maps, provide for navigation of groups’ interests
during political discussions.
Second, Pitkin firmly cautions that such rendering constitutes one
component of representation within healthy democratic systems.
Descriptive representation complements, but does not replace, other
forms of representation—such as authorisation, accountability and gov-
erning. If female voters decide that female representatives have inap-
propriately spoken for them, or improperly portrayed their
circumstances, they may sanction their representatives at the ballot
box. These political mechanisms of authorisation and accountability
are critical components of representation, but remain separate from the
rendering function. Similarly, descriptive representatives need not
govern for their ascriptive groups. The forging of policies that benefit
ascriptive groups constitutes a ‘governing for’ that instead matches
Pitkin’s formulation of substantive representation. Descriptive represen-
tation is merely legislators’ ‘rendering of information about something
that is absent’,14 or as Dovi and Mansbridge have said, presenting the
circumstances of dispossessed or marginalised groups.15
Viewed in this manner, descriptive representation as rendering and
substantive representation as governing are distinct. Franceschet and
Piscopo, for instance, categorise introducing bills that seek to benefit
women as the process of governing for women (whereas voting for
these bills counts as the outcome).16 These arguments conceptualise
both agenda setting and statutory change as substantive representation.
Rendering, in contrast, poses questions about how substantive rep-
resentation is performed: through what narratives are policies targeting
women rationalised and justified? How are the beneficiaries identified,
described and construed? While parliamentarians may serve as both
descriptive and substantive representatives, the empirical implications
of each function are distinct. For instance, introducing a bill to expand

maternity leave benefits women as a group—yet it also requires the
initiatives sponsors’ to articulate why women need such policies.
Descriptive representation captures the deliberative and persuasive
arguments that construct group interests, whereas substantive represen-
tation tabulates policy proposals and results.
Recent work on interest representation as claim-making also dis-
tinguishes between constituent portrayal and policy enactment.
Saward, for instance, argues that representation is not an ‘achievable

state of affairs’ following an election, but a series of ‘performative acts’
in which representatives make claims about citizens.17 Saward’s treat-
ment of representation as performance is consistent with Pitkin’s
concept of descriptive representation as rendering: both focus less on
the representatives’ policy output and more on their portrayal of citi-
zens’ reality. Focusing specifically on women, Squires explicates that
‘the central issue is not whether, but how, gender relations are consti-
tuted through representative claims-making processes’.18 Squires theo-
rises the concept ‘constitutive representation of gender’ to underscore
how officials, in advancing women’s interests, are actually envisioning,
debating and enforcing particular visions of men’s and women’s roles.
These visions, in structuring political dialogues, also have the power to
influence societal attitudes. Descriptive representatives are thus under-
taking the ‘identity-shaping’ of women as a group.19 Importantly, this
identity-shaping is both active and contested: neither Saward nor
Squires presume that all representatives share the same worldviews.
Legislators’ claims may therefore express complementary or competing
narratives of women’s identities and needs.
In sum, these formulations of descriptive representation isolate par-
liamentarians’ ‘rendering’ for empirical analysis. This focus operationa-
lises and evaluates descriptive representation as legislators’
information-bearing tasks, while remaining sensitive to the political
and institutional contexts in which speech occurs. Pitkin anticipates
that, in moments of political necessity, female parliamentarians will
invoke women’s opinions, needs and interests. Squires and Saward add
that this rendering reveals how leaders perceive women’s status and
roles. The remainder of the paper develops this analysis, asking: (i)
how do female legislators, as presumptive descriptive representatives of
women, render the interests and needs of women as a group; and (ii)
what vision of women’s identities, roles and values is constituted by
this process?
Rendering women with and without quotas

As formulated here, women’s descriptive representation can occur in
quota and non-quota systems. Indeed, foundational studies of women’s
parliamentary speeches were conducted in cases where women’s
numerical presence in the legislature was comparatively low. Kathlene
studied committee debates in the Colorado legislature to conclude that

men become more verbally domineering as women’s participation
increases; this dominance may decrease the airing of women’s con-
cerns.20 Tamerius analysed the quantity of feminist speeches in the U.S.
101st Congress to find that female legislators champion women’s well-
being six times more frequently than male legislators.21 In a similar
study, Cramer Walsh analysed speech content in U.S. House discus-
sions of welfare, abortion, science research, judicial affairs and
defence, finding that female legislators made greater references to mar-

ginalised social groups (i.e. single mothers) and to their private experi-
ences as women (i.e. offering firsthand accounts of motherhood).22
Bird, studying the British House of Commons, found that female MPs’
questions to ministers invoked ‘gender’ or ‘women’ more frequently
than those posed by male MPs; in particular, female MPs inquired
about women’s political representation, health, employment and pro-
tections from violence.23 These results show that many female legis-
lators both introduce women’s concerns to political discussions as well
as claim privileged information about women’s experiences.
Analyses of legislative speeches in non-quota countries likewise docu-
ments how female legislators render women. In Australia, during the
parliamentary debate on euthanasia permissibility, female MPs dis-
cussed morality and ethics more than men; female MPs also utilised
narratives from women’s lives more frequently than men, describing,
for instance, women’s challenges as caregivers to ill family members.24
Evidence from legislative debates in Belgium shows the ‘nature of the
contribution of group members to the substantive representation of
that group’: female legislators render female constituents’ issues with
diverse language, and some female legislators become ‘overactive’ in
their promotion of women’s rights.25 In Turkey, newly elected women
successfully blocked the criminalisation of adultery by making argu-
ments about women’s disadvantages within patriarchal marriages.26
These findings support the conceptualisation of descriptive represen-
tation as information-bearing. Further, fears about essentialising
women’s identity appear overstated: female legislators describe different
realities in different countries, and female legislators within one country
even render different versions of that reality. Celis explains, for instance,
that Belgian female MPs support women’s rights through narratives
about equality (women as bearers of individual rights) or difference
(women as citizens with special nurturing roles).27 Shogun shows that
Democratic women in the U.S. House render women’s social position,
while Republican women render women’s economic position, thus
reflecting the ideological differences among their respective female con-
stituents.28 Moreover, female legislators are not always acting as descrip-
tive representatives of women: consistent with Pitkin’s theory, legislative
debates that incorporate information or narratives about women occur
in specific moments, during discussions of particular policies.
Even so, women are relative newcomers to parliamentary chambers

and female MPs must have presence and agency.29 Gender quotas have
been viewed as one mechanism to increase the presence—and thus the
collective power—of female parliamentarians. Quotas, whether
implemented by binding statutes or adopted voluntarily by parties,
increase the quantity of female legislators.30 Yet, as Ayata and Tütüncü
demonstrate for the Turkish case, quotas are not necessary for female
legislators to render female constituents.31 Nonetheless, the very insti-
tutionalisation of a quota system indicates the country’s assumption

that the category ‘women’ is, as Pitkin would say, a politically relevant
characteristic that merits inclusion. Quotas are thus hypothesised to
magnify the pre-existing dynamics of representation, making female
legislators more likely to take women’s needs into account and to fight
for women’s rights.32
Yet few studies have examined how quotas affect the frequency and
nature of legislators’ claims about constituents. Mansbridge proposes
that quotas may improve the overall quality of the rendering in two
ways: (i) electing more representatives from certain ascriptive groups
raises the likelihood of attaining intra-group diversity and (ii) choosing
parliamentarians under quota regimes may mean that officials share a
greater concern for, or connection, to their group.33 Franceschet and
Piscopo call the latter hypothesis a ‘mandate effect’, demonstrating that
female legislators in Argentina who attribute their election to quotas
also feel compelled to speak and act for women.34 Related, Chaney
finds that Welsh women elected under parity rules often become
‘equality champions’—women MPs explicitly committed to attaining
broader rights and entitlements for women constituents.35 Xydias
examines the implementation of party quotas in Germany, finding that
female legislators not only reference both feminist and traditional
women’s issues, but that gender quotas predict the greater frequency of
both references.36 The Xydias study adds evidence for a mandate effect
and supports hypotheses about diversity effects: quotas enhance the
differences among elected women, thus multiplying the perspectives
portrayed. While more comparative research is clearly needed, quotas
generally seem to make descriptive representation more likely, more
prominent, and more varied.
Plenary discussions in Argentina

The vast majority of current studies analysing female legislators’ public
statements have been conducted in North America and Western
Europe, where quotas are typically non-existent or voluntarily adopted
by political parties.37 Yet, Latin American countries were the first to
pass national-level quota laws. Argentina became the world’s pioneer:
its 1991 quota law reformed the closed-list proportional representation
electoral system, mandating that all political parties nominate 30%
women for national elections. Subsequent revisions to the quota law
1. Women in Argentine Congress since quota law

Election year Percentage of women in Election year Percentage of
chamber of deputies women in senate
1989 6.3 1989 8.3
1991 5.4 1992 4.2
1993 13.6
1995 27.2 1995 5.8
1997 28.4 1998 5.8
1999 27.2
2001 29.2 2001 37.1

2003 33.9 2003 43.7
2005 35.8 2005 42.3
2007 36 2007 43
2009 38.5 2009 35.2
Source: Marx et al.
included implementing mandates to place women’s names in every

third list position, raising sanctions for parties’ non-compliance, and
applying the quota to the Senate in 2001. By the mid-2000s, women’s
numerical representation in the bicameral Argentine Congress had
increased to over 30%, as shown in Table 1.
Argentina has received substantial attention as a case study for how
quotas become adopted and implemented, as well as for quotas’ conse-
quences for substantive representation: authors have shown, for
instance, that female legislators in Argentina have indeed sought to
enact policies that promote women’s rights, women’s equality and
women’s sexual and reproductive health.38 Little attention has been
paid, however, to how the proposals’ advocates rendered women’s
interests or constituted gender roles. What particular vision of gender
relations did female legislators criticise or defend when advocating for
these initiatives? Argentina thus offers a good instance to explore
descriptive representation as rendering, for the extant literature has left
the ‘constitutive representation of gender’ unevaluated in this case.
This analysis of descriptive representation as claim-making focuses
on renderings made during female legislators’ plenary speeches. This
operationalisation accounts for the manner in which Argentine repre-
sentatives participate in the deliberative aspects of policymaking.
Argentina is a presidential system, and their Congress lacks practices
wherein legislators make daily one-minute speeches (as in the USA) or
pose questions to ministers (as in the UK). Further, records from com-
mittee meetings are unavailable, and very few legislators have personal
websites or press offices through which the public can access their
media statements or policy documents. For these reasons, I have
focused on legislators’ speeches during plenary sessions, which are part
of the congressional record. From 1998 forward (well after the adop-
tion of the quota), these expositions have been posted on the
government website for public consumption. Examining these speeches

reflects a significant methodological point: descriptive representation
has been theorised as legislators’ talking function, though the type of
speech used to measure this function will vary according to case-
specific institutional arrangements (as well as data availability).
Further context is also needed for understanding the Argentine case.
‘Plenary speeches’ are lengthy commentaries offered on proposed laws,
are delivered in the format of a debate, with votes cast immediately
afterward. These votes are almost never negative; said another way,

initiatives reaching the plenary almost always succeed. Party leaders
collude, permitting only those proposals with favourable majorities to
reach the floor. Given that Argentine party leaders state yay/nay pos-
itions in advance, and given that party discipline is notoriously high,
the outcome of the ( positive) floor vote is typically known by legis-
lators in advance.39
Nonetheless, legislators make speeches about the proposal, subject-
ing it to ‘debate’. While these speeches are not persuasive (because of
the predetermined vote outcome), they are deliberative and performa-
tive. First, many initiatives are voted without debate, so party leaders’
decision to allocate time for speeches—especially given the prearranged
‘yes’ vote—indicates that they perceive airing multiple perspectives on
particular proposals to be important. Second, parliamentarians receive
‘speaking rights’ in two circumstances. Either the legislator participated
substantially in the proposal’s redaction, and her commentaries reflect
privileged knowledge about the proposal’s benefits, or the legislator
feels particularly strongly about the proposal, and has requested floor
time from the chamber leadership. Legislators making plenary speeches
thus have vested interests in the proposal.
Third, speakers make claims about constituents in their speeches.
They typically use their lengthy expositions to defend or critique the
proposal’s rationale and its benefits to society, thus delineating their
reasons for endorsing or rejecting the initiative. Legislators frequently
defend or challenge claims made by their colleagues earlier in the
‘debate’. Fourth, the plenary sessions are ‘on the record’ and enacted
before an audience, which usually consists of interested parties from
the executive branch, the media, non-governmental organisations and
civil society. The transcripts’ frequent mentions of applauses, objec-
tions and interruptions demonstrate that both the public and the poli-
ticians treat the speaker’s words with great interest. While the audience
may mean that legislators gain different benefits from speaking—that
is, some impress their party bosses while others receive media
coverage—the nature of the speeches is the same: to take a position
and explain why.40 Plenary speeches are thus instances wherein
Argentine legislators perform those tasks Pitkin attributed to descrip-
tive representatives: rendering information about constituents’ circum-
stances in politically relevant moments.
Contextualising women’s participation in the Argentine

chamber
To explore how female representatives render women in Argentina, I
performed a qualitative content analysis of two plenary ‘debates’ that
dealt with universalising access to contraception. These proposals,
which clearly invoked female constituents’ interests and circumstances,
were discussed in Argentina’s lower house, the Cámara de Diputados
(Chamber of Deputies) in 2001 and 2006. The 2002 Ley de Salud
Sexual y Procreación Responsable (Law on Sexual Health and

Responsible Procreation) mandated the dissemination of contraceptive
devices, as well as information related to sexuality and safe sex, in
health sites throughout the country. The 2006 Ley de Anticoncepción
Quirúrgica (Law of Surgical Contraception) extended the programme
to include tubal ligations and vasectomies. Importantly, the laws did
not legalise contraception: methods, devices and surgeries were techni-
cally available on the private market, but most doctors and clinics
refused to provide them. Further, the services were not offered in the
public facilities and labour union healthcare plans through which most
Argentines are covered. Given the moral and social implications of
guaranteeing contraceptive access to all citizens, the initiatives were
hotly contested inside and outside the Congress. Feminist non-
governmental organisations and religious leaders exerted pressure on
legislators to ratify or reject the proposals, respectively.
Since these sexual health reforms generated much controversy and
attention, their plenary speeches are ‘most likely’ places to look for ren-
derings of female constituents’ demands. Indeed, in the 2001–2003
legislative term, when Salud Sexual was debated, 70 women held 257
of the seats in the lower chamber: due to the quota, women comprised
27% of the chamber but 60% of Salud Sexual speakers. In the 2005–
2007 term, when Anticoncepción Quirúrgica was debated, women held
92 of 257 seats: they comprised 36.8% of the chamber but 53% of the
Anticoncepción Quirúrgica speakers. Female legislators notably spoke
in proportions greater than their seat shares. These proportions
support the hypothesis that, in quota countries, many female represen-
tatives will speak on matters of importance to female constituents.
Yet, how can we be certain that these high numbers are only associ-
ated with women’s interests bills, and that female constituents are ren-
dered only when debating policies that clearly invoke gender rights or
roles? Pitkin’s conceptualisation of descriptive representation envi-
sioned that parliamentarians would act in politically relevant moments.
Before exploring the precise content of the renderings in the sexual
health debates, I wished to confirm that these plenary sessions were,
indeed, relevant moments. To do so, I compared the frequency and
type of female legislators’ speeches on gender policy to the frequency
and type of their speeches on other proposals.41
Table 2 contextualises Argentine female legislators’ participation by

summarising the speech contributions of lower-house diputados [depu-
ties] to 14 proposals discussed between 2001 and 2009, including the
two sexual health reforms. The first set of columns examines the pro-
portions of the total male and female participants. The second set of
2. Comparing debate participation across issues and across legislator sex in Argentina’s lower
house

Policy group Year Participant count Participation/total
chamber presence
Total Women Men Women Men Total

(%) (%) (%)
Women’s rights and wellbeing
Salud Sexual 2001 29 (100%) 19 (60%) 13 (40%) 25 7 11
(contraceptive
availability)
Quota Law for 2003 9 (100%) 6 (67%) 3 (33%) 7 2 4
Judicial Branch
Humane Delivery 2004 5 (100%) 5 (100%) 0 6 0 2
Anticoncepción 2006 36 (100%) 19 (53%) 17 (47%) 21 10 14
Quirúrgica
(surgical
contraception)
Sexual Education 2006 10 (100%) 8 (80%) 2 (20%) 9 1 4
Violence Against 2009 17 (100%) 14 (82%) 3 (18%) 14 2 7
Women
Society and welfare
Private 2003 23 (100%) 7 (30%) 16 (70%) 8 10 9
Pensions
(government
intervention)
Organ Donation 2005 32 (100%) 9 (28%) 23 (72%) 10 14 13
Microcredit for 2006 15 (100%) 2 (13%) 13 (87%) 2 8 6
Disadvantaged
Groups
Education 2006 8 (100%) 5 (62.5%) 3 (37.5%) 5 2 3
Reform
Pension Reform 2007 32 (100%) 3 (9%) 29 (91%) 3 18 13
(contribution
regimen)
Pension Reform 2009 8 (100%) 5 (62.5%) 3 (37.5%) 5 2 3
(university
teachers)
International affairs
Anti-Terrorism 2005 11 (100%) 3 (27%) 8 (73%) 3 5 7
Treaties
Refugee 2006 15 (100%) 4 (27%) 11 (73%) 4 7 6
Protections
Source: Elaboration by author based on debate transcripts drawn from the on-line archive of
the Argentine Chamber of Deputies.
columns calculates the total percentage of female/male speakers given

the total number of female/male deputies in the chamber.
The proposals are grouped into three categories: (i) women’s rights
and wellbeing; (ii) social reforms; (iii) international affairs. The latter
two categories were deliberately selected to contrast with policies that
explicitly invoke gender. Foreign affairs are typically classified as ‘mas-
culine’ policy domains, drawing little attention from female legis-
lators.42 ‘Social reforms’ constitutes an intermediate category. On the
one hand, proposals dealing with education, health and social security

do not necessarily address demands made by women as a group. On
the other hand, these policy areas are typically classified as ‘feminine’
policy domains, for they manifest concern with helping children and
the disadvantaged.43 Since not all bills in Argentina are discussed on
the chamber floor, the proposals in each category represent a non-
random sample. Drawing from a database of every proposal discussed
in the Argentine lower house from 1999 to 2009, I selected those pol-
icies that (a) had been recognised by the media or by legislative inter-
viewees as significant reforms; and (b) had been acknowledged as
politically or morally controversial. Contentious policies either touched
upon entrenched interests (i.e. unions and pensioners), targeted deeply
held religious beliefs (i.e. organ donation), or invoked passionate
debates about international politics (i.e. relations with Islamic
countries). When reforms are controversial, high debate participation
from both male and female parliamentarians is expected.
The first noticeable trend is that, in general, few legislators make
plenary expositions. In other words, the proportion of deputies offering
speeches on a given policy ranges from 2 to 14%. The second trend is
female legislators’ low participation in debates on international affairs
and social policy. The initiatives in the former category deal with
Argentina’s signature on anti-terrorism treaties and method of proces-
sing asylum-seekers. Male legislators’ commentaries dominated discus-
sions of these measures. Further, neither male nor female legislators
discussed these initiatives in gendered terms, even though the refugee
proposal contained a special provision for female asylum-seekers who
had been victims of domestic violence. Likewise, male legislators spoke
more frequently on social reforms, with two exceptions: the general
education reform in 2006 and a pension reform in 2009 that extended
coverage to university professors. (Yet these two plenary discussions
were also very brief.) Moreover, neither male nor female legislators
referenced women when making claims about any proposals in this cat-
egory. The beneficiaries of the programmes were not disaggregated by
sex; even the microcredit programme, which has targeted women else-
where in the developing world, was described by Argentine legislators
as benefiting male and female citizens. While legislators may have
spoke about female beneficiaries at other points in the proposals’ evol-
utions, such claims were not made before a public audience on the
chamber floor. For both comparison categories, male legislators domi-

nated the debates and female constituents’ needs or interests were not
explicitly discussed.
In contrast, the six proposals addressing women’s rights show female
legislators’ greater participation in plenary discussions, both in terms
of total numbers of speakers and in terms of their total seat-share in
the chamber. These proposals represent the key ‘women’s interest’
reforms discussed on the chamber floor since the adoption of the
quota.44 All the initiatives, save the measure to extend the quota law to

the judicial branch, were successful. The humane delivery measure
clarified hospitals’ ethical obligations to pregnant women; the sexual
education law applied to public schools; and the violence against
women reform established protections for victims. When these propo-
sals received air time on the chamber floor, male legislators spoke
infrequently: they accounted for under half of the debate participants,
remaining particularly silent during the discussions on foetal delivery
and gender-based violence.
Thus, Table 2 confirms that female legislators do not habitually
make voluminous contributions to plenary speeches in Argentina.
Rather, female legislators speak more frequently when discussing pro-
posals, such as contraceptive access, that clearly implicate women as
the policy beneficiaries. These speeches will be instances wherein
female legislators act as information-givers about female constituents.
That is, female legislators render women when discussing women’s
health, wellbeing and sexuality.
Rendering women’s sexual health in Argentina

Argentina’s sexual health reforms proposed a dramatic restructuring of
gender roles, one in which women could exert greater autonomy over
the timing of their pregnancies and perhaps even eschew motherhood
completely. Legislators thus made impassioned appeals that either criti-
cised or defended a liberalisation of women’s reproductive rights and
its consequences for Argentine society.45 Even though the proposals’
advance to the plenary signalled their eventual approval, the incendiary
nature of sexual health reform meant that male and female legislators
had strong incentives to publicly explicate their vote choices.
The high proportion of female legislators as speech-makers (Table 2)
permits an exploration of whether quotas generate ‘mandate effects’ or
‘diversity effects’. While female legislators did not explicitly associate
their election under quotas to their support for contraception, they
made repeated references to how the proposals ‘fulfilled their obli-
gation’ to advance women’s rights or ‘paid a debt’ that lawmakers
owed to women’s equality.46 Cristina Guevara, in introducing the
Salud Sexual proposal, said she was fulfilling the ambitions of past
female deputies who had fought for, but not won, women’s reproduc-
tive rights. Guevara and her colleagues also identified mandates when
they referenced the equal protections guarantees in the Argentine

Constitution and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination against Women, which Argentina signed in 1994.
Female deputies argued that these documents obliged them, as agents
of the state, ‘to legislate for equality’.
The debates more clearly show a ‘diversity effect’. In Argentina, as
elsewhere, the quota applies to all parties, which ensures the election
of women across the ideological spectrum. Female legislators thus enter
congress with differing worldviews. As shown in Table 3, female legis-

lators from right, centre-right, centre, centre-left and left parties all par-
ticipated in the Salud Sexual and Anticoncepción Quirúrgica debates.
Further, the direction of this participation defies traditional expec-
tations about partisan affiliation, which suggests that left-leaning legis-
lators will favour women’s rights when compared with right-leaning
legislators47: one Anticoncepción Quirúrgica dissenter came from the
left, and female legislators from the right largely supported both initiat-
ives.48 Only one female speaker opposed Salud Sexual, and four female
speakers opposed Anticoncepción Quirúrgica—all on the grounds of
protecting women in their natural roles as mothers. Overall, women’s
voices in the affirmative dominated both plenary discussions.
Additionally, female legislators based their support using, in Squires’
terms, different constitutive representations of gender. To organise
these representations, I identified 65 words or phrases that captured
key sentiments in the plenary speeches, such as ‘motherhood’, ‘equal
access’ and ‘free exercise of sexuality’. I manually tabulated the fre-
quency of these words or phrases in each speaker’s exposition, and
cross-tabbed their usage with the speaker’s sex, party membership and
position on the proposal. The 65 words or phrases were then grouped
according to the particular vision of women or women’s roles they
invoked. For instance, ‘motherhood’ and ‘family’ were grouped
together, as were ‘rights’ and ‘liberty’. These groupings yielded five
narrative tropes characterising female legislators’ visions of gender.49
First, womanhood was rendered in either traditional or feminist
terms, with women conceived as members of families or as auton-
omous individuals, respectively. These conceptualisations generated
two of the narrative structures: a conservative vision that emphasised
women’s roles as mothers and caretakers and a progressive viewpoint
that envisioned women as independent decision-makers. These distinct
ideologies were invoked to support (or occasionally oppose) the
measures, though using a conservative frame did not perfectly correlate
with belonging to a right-leaning party, nor did using a liberal frame
correspond exactly to membership in a left-leaning party. These ideol-
ogies also equally appeared in two additional narrative tropes: impacts
on women’s wellbeing, and arguments about pluralism and fairness.
The fifth narrative trope was the only one used exclusively by the
reforms’ opponents, for it mobilised objection based on celebrating the
3. Deputies participating in the Salud Sexual and Anticoncepción Quirúrgica debates

Deputy Party Party ideology Vote
Salud Sexual: 2001
Fernanda Ferrera Acción por la República R Y
Marı́a Emilia Biglieri Demócrata Progresista R Y
Cristina Guevara Unión Cı́vica Radical C Y
Marta Silvia Milesi Unión Cı́vica Radical C Y
Marta Isabel Di Leo Unión Cı́vica Radical C Y
Marı́a Beatriz Nofal Unión Cı́vica Radical C Y
Marı́a Elena Barbagelata Partido Socialista C Y

Silvia Virginia Martı́nez Partido Justicialista (‘Peronists’) CL Y
Graciela Marı́a Giannettasio Partido Justicialista (‘Peronists’) CL Y
Marı́a Rita Drisaldi Partido Justicialista (‘Peronists’) CL N
Adriana Norma Bevacqua Partido Justicialista (‘Peronists’) CL Y
Marı́a Teresita Colombo Frente Cı́vico y Social L Y
Bárbara Inés Espı́nola Frepaso L Y
Marcela Antonia Bordenave Frepaso L Y
Elisa Carrı́o Afirmación para una República L Y
Igualitaria
Marı́a América Gónzalez Afirmación para una República L Y
Igualitaria
Anticoncepción Quirúrgica: 2006
Marı́a del Carmen Rico Peronista Federal R Y
Mirta Pérez Peronista Federal R Y
Paula Marı́a Bertol Propuesta Republicana R Y
Silvana Myriam Giudici Unión Cı́vica Radical R Y
Beatriz Leyba de Martı́ Unión Cı́vica Radical R Y
Cinthya Gabriela Hernández Unión Cı́vica Radical R Y
Nélida Mabel Mansur Acción Federalista CR N
Eusebia Antonia Jérez Fuerza Republicana CR N
Alicia Marcela Comelli Movimiento Popular Neuquino CR Y
Silvia Augsburger Partido Socialista CL Y
Marcela Virgina Rodrı́guez Afirmación para una República L Y
Igualitaria
Elisa Carrı́o Afirmación para una República L N
Igualitaria
Marı́a Fabiana Rı́os Afirmación para una República L Y
Igualitaria
Alicia Ester Tate Partido Justicialista (‘Peronists’) L Y
Marı́a del Carmen Alarcón Partido Justicialista (‘Peronists’) L N
Graciela Beatriz Gutiérrez Partido Justicialista (‘Peronists’) L Y
Juliana Isabel Marino Partido Justicialista (‘Peronists’) L Y
Irene Bösch de Sartori Partido Justicialista (‘Peronists’) L Y
Graciela Zulema Rosso Partido Justicialista (‘Peronists’) L Y
Source: Legislative debate transcripts provided deputy name, party identification and vote.
The party ideology is calculated using data from Alemán et al.
reproductive capacities of poor women. Figure 1 shows how these nar-

ratives relate to each other.
All narrative strategies, discussed below, reveal how female legis-
lators made claims about the reproductive realities of Argentine
women. Male legislators’ speeches are not presented as instances of the
Figure 1. Conceptual relationship between five narrative tropes used in the 2001 and 2006
sexual health debates in Argentina.

descriptive representation of women, though men’s participation indi-
cates that parliamentarians can make representative claims for ascrip-
tive groups even without being group members. Nonetheless, the
research question has been whether and how female representatives
render the circumstances of female constituents, and the sexual health
expositions clearly illustrate Pitkin’s roadmap analogy. First, female
legislators offer information that reflects the circumstances of diverse
female constituents. Second, these roadmaps navigate different routes
but reach same destination: since the sexual health initiatives were ulti-
mately successful, these narratives justified Argentine women’s access
to reproductive health services while using distinct ideologies.
CONSERVATIVE VISIONS OF WOMEN AND Female deputies

FAMILY.
constructed their vision of women’s needs based on conservative
opposition, the nature of which was expressed by (mostly male)
legislators during the plenary. Whereas male opponents decried
contraception’s ability to revoke the noble job of motherhood, which
would disenfranchise women as nurturers of the nation, female
proponents argued that contraception would make women better
mothers. For instance, Bárbara Espı́nola, speaking in the Salud Sexual
debate, said ‘We are gathered here today . . . to protect the women and
couples of this country that, in wishing to have strong and healthy
families, must be able to plan the number and timing of their children’.
Likewise, Fernanda Ferrera reassured listeners that Salud Seuxal helped
women choose when to become mothers. Providing contraception
would not inhibit women’s maternal mandate, for ‘we cannot forget
that we all have our own natural desire to become mothers’. Beatriz
Leyba be Martı́, speaking in the Anticoncepción Quirúrgica debate,
similarly emphasised that ‘this proposal will not dissolve the family’,
for couples would jointly undertake the decision to seek surgical

contraception. Finally, female speakers stressed their status as mothers,
referencing their own children, whom they loved and raised with great
affection. As such, the conservative female proponents—some, like
Ferrera, from left-leaning parties—claimed to represent mothers and
wives, who needed contraception in order to build the best families
possible.
This motif also appeared in conservative statements against the pro-
posals, though this narrative was less frequent. The one woman object-

ing to Salud Sexual, Marı́a Rita Drisaldi from the left-leaning Peronist
party, stated her desire to ‘protect women and children’ by giving them
welfare packages, not birth control pills. Drisaldi stressed the impor-
tance of teaching values, not fertility control, to nuclear families. The
narrative that women’s happiness is actualised through motherhood
reappeared in the Anticoncepción Quirúrgica debate. Opponent Marı́a
del Carmen Alarcón, also a Peronist, stated, ‘Not only because of my
experience [as a single mother] but because of the childbearing experi-
ences of many humble women in Argentina, I vote against this control
of our fertility, our roles, our ancestry, and our family’. Also opposed
to tubal ligations and vasectomies, Eusebia Jérez, from a far-right
party, claimed that she ‘knew the virtues and morals’ of poor
women—meaning their desire to enrich their lives with children. In
these narratives, contraception would sterilise poor women and prevent
motherhood, inhibiting gender role fulfilment and ultimately bringing
shame and regret.
The deployment of conservative narratives to both support and
oppose contraception means that female citizens—both for and against
the reforms, on the left as well as on the right—found their views rep-
resented in the plenary speeches. Women, and particularly poor
women, were rendered by female legislators as mothers who either
planned their pregnancies or joyously embraced their biological
destiny. These positions reflected the diverse experiences among voters
who also identified primarily as mothers.
PROGRESSIVE DEPICTIONS OF WOMEN’S ROLES. Unlike the conservative

narratives of women and family, progressive conceptualisations of
women’s roles were deployed by female legislators exclusively to
support the reforms. In these narratives, female speakers made claims
not about mothers’ need of protection, but about women’s status as
universal citizens. These renderings exemplify a ‘constitutive
representation of gender’ that conceives of women as bearers of equal
rights and liberties.
Cristina Guevara, in introducing Salud Sexual, explained that the
measure ‘makes possible the access of men and women—especially us
women—to the free exercise of their sexuality, to their sexual rights,

and to the possibility of choosing how many children they want to
have and in what moment’. Marta di Leo added that Salud Sexual
would ‘bring about . . . a new conception of citizenship and a new
social contract, one based on the full and equal participation of
women and men in the social, political, economic and cultural life of
our country’. The law would re-establish citizenship by guaranteeing
women the open exercise of their sexuality and reproductive capacities.
Marta Milesi stated, ‘We cannot speak of human rights in this country

unless we can speak of sexual rights’. Milesi linked contraception to
‘liberty’, and stated that ‘We women do not want to be treated as
living incubators, as if we were designed only for mechanical processes
[of birthing]’. Advocating for Anticoncepción Quirúrgica, Cinthya
Hernández spoke of ‘personal rights’ and ‘individual autonomy’. These
narratives departed from conservatives’ claims about women as rela-
tional selves (mothers-in-families), instead portraying women as inde-
pendent beings (individuals-in-society).
Several female legislators also made claims about the rights of
specific groups of women. Elisa Carrı́o, for instance, believed Salud
Sexual’s provisions for contraceptive education would guarantee ‘the
right of a girl to know what is her body’. Similarly, advocating for
Anticoncepción Quirúrgica, Alicia Comelli argued that young women
had the right to ‘solve their contraceptive needs’. Adriana Bevacqua, in
her speech supporting Salud Sexual, made claims on behalf of women
with HIV: infected women had rights to information about contracep-
tion, which would prevent the transmission of illness from mother to
child. Finally, Mirta Pérez, a parliamentarian from a far-right party
who supported surgical contraception, argued that ‘women with many
children already’ had the right to ‘close the factory’.
These progressive depictions of women’s roles emphasised sexual
liberty as a right. In particular, female speakers supporting
Anticoncepción Quirúrgica sought to divorce sex from procreation.
Leftist Irene Bösch de Sartori portrayed Argentine women as individ-
uals ‘who want to arrive home every night and experience pleasure’:
‘these women say they are like any other, and whether they have ten
children, a severe illness, or are unmarried, they ought to have the
possibility of surgical contraception’. Furthering her claim, Bösch drew
on her own experiences as a woman, stating ‘I also want to experience
pleasure, and I am 45 years old’. Likewise, rightist Pérez opened her
speech with ‘I will speak as a woman and as a mother’, and then
stated, ‘Truly, we women are not animals that only have sex to repro-
duce and nothing more; we want to enjoy ourselves’. She proceeded to
outline the challenges women face in their reproductive lives, including
the agony of menstrual periods, the embarrassment and painfulness of
gynaecological exams, and the psychological pressures that result from
sexual dissatisfaction, childrearing and marriage. Here Bösch and
Pérez—female legislators from right and left parties—are constituting a

vision of gender relations based on men’s and women’s equal, auton-
omous enjoyment of sexuality.
NARRATIVES OF WELLBEING. Lopreite, writing on sexual health reform

in Argentina, has termed the division between conservative and
progressive visions a split between the pragmatists and feminists.50 Yet,
both conservative/pragmatists and progressives/feminists supported the

reforms, often in ways inconsistent with their partisan identifications,
but through multiple, diverse perspectives on the meaning of
womanhood. The two camps united, however, to explain that access to
contraceptive devices and surgeries would enhance female citizens’
wellbeing, both for women generally and for poor and young women
particularly.
Female legislators universally deployed narratives that rendered
Argentine women as victims of a hostile legal system and substandard
public health sector. Speakers explained that the illegality of abortion,
combined with poor healthcare infrastructure, makes clandestine abor-
tions the leading cause of maternal death. Thus, as Marı́a Elena
Barbagelata argued, Salud Sexual would prevent women’s death from
back alley abortions, from which ‘500 women die a year’. Elisa Carrı́o,
who also supported Salud Sexual, mentioned the high incidences of
women who endure repeated assaults, incest, and marital rape. In her
speech, Carrı́o explained that the legal system offers abused women no
recourse, but contraceptive access would allow them to avoid
unwanted pregnancies and thus clandestine abortions. In the
Anticoncepción Quirúrgica debate, Alicia Tate noted the ‘tremendous
weight of morbidity and mortality that women suffer because of their
reproductive role’, and Cinthya Hernández mentioned that women die
annually from complications related to pregnancy, birth and post-
partum care. Defending surgical contraception, Beatriz Leyba de Martı́
portrayed women as victims most forcefully: ‘we all know that women
are raped by their husbands, who arrive home in an uncontrollable
state of drunkenness, and make their wives pregnant’. In these
instances, female deputies from radical left parties (Barbagelata, Carrı́o
and Tate) and right-leaning parties (Hernández and Leyba de Martı́)
coincided in portraying women’s health risks.
Plenary speakers also described the particular disadvantages faced by
poor and young women in Argentina. Guevara reminded her colleagues
that ‘we who are seated in this chamber, women of the middle class
and women of the upper class, have the information, knowledge and
access to health services, and that other women do not have these pos-
sibilities’. Graciela Giannettasio explained that unwanted pregnancies
occur most frequently among the impoverished section of society,
placing a great emotional and financial burden on poor women.
Bárbara Espı́nola, also speaking in the Salud Seuxal debate, character-

ised ‘inequality as geographic’, referencing the high rates of teen preg-
nancies and maternal mortality in rural areas. This unjust situation,
Espı́nola continued, is worsened by increasing rates of teen pregnancy
in remote areas. Fernanda Ferrera—who believed all women naturally
desire to become mothers—observed that Salud Sexual protects the ‘the
weakest in society’. These victims, according to Ferrera, were poor
women and young women, the latter ‘whose parents can neither
discuss with them nor given them information and advice about

sexuality’.
This wellbeing narrative also appeared in the Anticoncepción
Quirúrgica debate. For instance, Graciela Gutiérrez referenced her
experience as a doctor: ‘I have not remained in the operating room . . .
but walked through the earth to see the poverty of my province. I must
legislate for the men and women who need that health, in its broadest
sense, be available to all’. Bösch de Sartori explained that wealthy
women face no barriers to having tubal ligations; upper-class women
can purchase the operation privately, whereas poor women must peti-
tion a judge to receive the procedure in public hospitals. Since
Anticoncepción Quirúrgica would overturn the petition requirement,
poor women will no longer have to ‘humble themselves’ by defending
their private decisions to state agents.
Overall, many female legislators’ speeches offered a roadmap that
details the disadvantages and suffering of poor and young women.
These depictions further reveal that female legislators can descriptively
represent women outside their social classes. For instance, Guevara
explicitly acknowledged that, as an upper-class woman, the law would
not affect her life. That elite politicians focused on the needs of
non-elite women shows that descriptive representation does not depend
on an exact, attribute-by-attribute resemblance between legislators and
constituents.
NARRATIVES OF PLURALISM AND FAIRNESS. Female legislators’ emphasis

on plurality during the sexual health debates further demonstrates how
descriptive representatives can render their ascriptive groups without
sharing the same life experiences. In defending Salud Sexual,
Giannettasio stated ‘when we legislate we are plural and must do so for
all citizens’. Her colleague Marı́a Emilia Biglieri affirmed that the law
‘cannot be based in utopia’ and must ‘confront the reality of sexual
activity’ in Argentina. Marcela Rodrı́guez argued that discourses about
the centrality of motherhood assume that all people want the same
goods; yet, the state cannot make this assumption, as it violates the
norms of democratic pluralism.
In the Anticoncepción Quirúrgica debates, Gutiérrez favored the law
‘to rescue a plural Argentina’ which means ‘respecting the right of each
person to manage his or her own body’. Likewise, Juliana Marino

affirmed that reproductive decisions ‘fall within a personal moral
sphere that enables [us] to make decisions according to [our] own
values’. Leyba de Martı́ argued that religions offer spiritual guidance,
but legislators write laws that must go beyond ‘our own particularised
visions of reality’ and incorporate ‘the diverse experiences of
Argentines’. Marı́a Fabiana Rı́os urged legislators to recognise how
marital relationships are characterised by different balances of power,
meaning varying degrees of respect and non-violence. Finally, Marı́a

del Carmen Rico—a member of a highly conservative party—stated
that ‘we cannot legislate for certain social groups, religions or political
parties; we must write the best laws possible for all the citizens of
Argentina’.
Female speakers in both debates also connected pluralism to fairness.
Again, they spoke for women outside their social class by accusing
opponents of hypocrisy. Di Leo believed that elected officials who
opposed Salud Sexual were ‘hypocrites’, people who would withhold
birth control from the poor but never from themselves. Similarly, in
the Anticoncepción Quirúrgica debate, Bösch de Sartori referred to
legislators’ hypocrisy in subjecting poor women to a state scrutiny that
they themselves, as upper-class citizens, would never endure. The focus
on fairness shows that, on occasion, female politicians’ elite status may
help them make claims about poor women’s circumstances: because
they are drawn from the upper classes of society, female legislators
know exactly which advantages marginalised women lack.
GLORIFYING THE POOR. Some may characterise female elites’ claims

about poor women’s need for birth control as condescending and
paternalistic. Conservative female legislators (not necessarily all from
right-leaning parties) presented this view as well: some speakers
claimed that poor women undertake the noble task of raising large
families, as opposed to upper-class women, who shirk their duties by
having too few children. In these renderings, conservative legislators
become the defenders of poor women, protecting their noble
reproductive capacities from elite feminists who would use state power
to implement population control.
In the Anticoncepción Quirúrgica debate, for instance, opponent
Jérez explained that Argentine women—especially poor women—want
desperately to follow their maternal instincts. Similarly, leftist Marı́a
del Carmen Alarcón portrayed childbearing as poor women’s salvation:
‘It hurts me to hear [my colleagues] referring to families with eight,
nine, or ten children. The truth is that I am frightened that we wish to
put families in chains . . . I reject sterilisation for reasons of poverty or
for reason’s of women’s poverty, for the poor women are those who
most defend life by deciding to have children’. Jérez and Alarcón
championed poor women’s ability to raise and love as many as thirteen

children.
Likewise, speakers suggested that feminists’ cries for birth control
were hurting poor women. For example, Jérez criticised those female
legislators who support the law in order to help ‘the woman who has
12 children and is beaten by her husband’: Jérez stated that contracep-
tion brings neither emotional nor physical security to poor women.
Nélida Mansur concurred, noting that clinics provide psychological
counselling to alcoholics, drug addicts and batterers, but not to abused

women. These speakers accused proponents of wishing to destroy poor
women’s livelihood, when the real solution would be investments in
social services. These statements—though not plentiful—represented
those female constituents who fear fertility control and view mother-
hood as their principal role.
Conclusion
Cynics may claim that parliamentary discussions allow legislators to
engage in mere showmanship: plenary speeches constitute grandstand-
ing, and parliamentarians use impassioned rhetoric simply to impress
colleagues and constituents. Yet, the analysis developed here regards
showmanship as part of descriptive representation. As Saward and
Squires have suggested, the deliberative and performative content of
parliamentarians’ statements contain valuable information about
which identities are represented, and how.
Thus, I have argued that descriptive representation is more than the
percentage of women or minorities in a legislature. Returning to
Hanna Pitkin’s conceptualisation of descriptive representation as
‘standing for’ reveals that legislators from underrepresented groups are
not passive ciphers of inclusion. Rather, legislators actively describe
group needs, demands and identities. Parliamentary speech becomes a
medium through which group representatives actively speak for their
constituents.
The application of this theory to the case of sexual health reform in
Argentina shows that, indeed, female legislators render female constitu-
ents. In doing so, female deputies constitute myriad identities for
Argentine women, including those of mother, sexual being, vulnerable
teen and decisive adult. Claims are made about women while invoking
multiple, diverse visions of gender roles and gender relations. The
application of a legislative gender quota ensured the election of women
from across the ideological and the partisan spectrum, which further
engendered the diversity of women’s speech. That female legislators
supported sexual health reforms by relying on feminist and traditional
narratives further undermines critics’ fears that descriptive represen-
tation will essentialise or homogenise women. Finally, such rendering,
or claim-making, occurs only in politically salient moments: descriptive
representatives participate in all aspects of lawmaking, and speaking

for their ascriptive groups is not a constant task.
Parliamentarians’ public statements are clearly relevant to the
empirical study of women’s representation. Conceiving of descriptive
representation not merely in terms of quantity, but in terms of content,
provides new and promising directions of research. Future studies need
to better specify the relationship between rendering in quota and non-
quota contexts. Such investigations can be carried out in two ways:
examining female legislators’ rendering functions in countries where

data availability permits comparing pre-quota legislative periods with
post-quota periods, or identifying two similar cases whose primary
difference is the presence/absence of a quota mechanism. Both research
designs will expand the number of cases to develop more rigorous,
comparative analyses.
Department of Political Science

University of California
San Diego
CA, USA
jpiscopo@ucsd.edu
1 I would like to thank Karen Celis, Susan Franceschet, Mona Lena Krook, Hugh (Bud) Mehan, Leslie
Schwindt-Bayer and two anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier drafts. I also thank the
members of the Writers’ Workshop at the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at the University of
California, San Diego for their comments. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the 2008
‘Thinking Gender’ Conference at the University of California, Los Angeles, and at the 2008 Annual
Meeting of the American Political Science Association. Participants at these conferences are also
thanked for their feedback and questions. The final draft of this paper was prepared while I was a
Visiting Fellow at the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at the University of California, San Diego.
This work was supported by research grants from The Center for Iberian and Latin American Studies
and The Institute for International, Comparative, and Area Studies at the University of California,
San Diego. This work was also supported by the Research Prize from the Carrie Chapman Catt
Center for Women and Politics at Iowa State University and the Graduate Research Fellowship
program at Wellesley College.
2 H. Pitkin. The Concept of Representation, University of California Press, 1967.
3 There are many studies on women and substantive representation. A few notable examples are
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9; L. Schwindt-Bayer, ‘Still Supermadres? Gender and Policy Priorities of Latin American Legislators’,
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2008, 99 –110.
5 M. Saward, ‘The Representative Claim’, Contemporary Political Theory, 5, 2006, 297 –318;
J. Squires, ‘The Constitutive Representation of Gender: Extra-Parliamentary Representations of
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6 A. Tripp and A. Kang, ‘The Global Impact of Quotas: On the Fast Tract to Increased Female
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7 S. Franceschet and J. Piscopo, ‘Gendering Quotas and Women’s Substantive Representation: Lessons
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8 A. Phillips, The Politics of Presence, Oxford University Press, 1995; J. Mansbridge, ‘Should Blacks
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9 L. Schwindt-Bayer and W. Mishler, ‘An Integrated Model of Representation’, Journal of Politics, 67,
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10 L. Baldez and A. Catalano, ‘Quotas and Qualifications: The Impact of Gender Quota Laws on the
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11 A.M. Tripp, ‘Uganda: Agents of Change for Women’s Advancement?’, in G. Bauer and H.E. Britton
(eds), Women in African Parliaments, Lynne Reinner, 2006; M. Nanivadekar, ‘Are Quotas a Good
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12 H. Pitkin, 1967, pp. 61 –2.
13 H. Pitkin, 1967, pp. 66 –70, 90.
14 H. Pitkin, 1967, p. 113
15 S. Dovi, ‘Preferable Descriptive Representatives: Will Just Any Woman, Black or Latino Do?’,
American Political Science Review, 96, 2002, 729 – 43; J. Mansbridge, ‘Quota Problems, Combating
the Dangers of Essentialism’, Politics & Gender, 1, 2005, 622 –37.
16 S. Franceschet and J. Piscopo, 2008.
17 M. Saward, 2006.
18 J. Squires, 2008, p. 188.
19 J. Squires, 2008, p. 189.
20 L. Kathlene, ‘Power and Influence in State Legislative Policymaking: The Interaction of Gender and
Position in Committee Hearing Debates’, American Political Science Review, 88, 1994, 560 –76.
21 K.L. Tamerius, ‘Sex, Gender, and Leadership in the Representation of Women’, in G. Duerst-Lahti
and R.M. Kelly (eds), Power, Leadership, and Governance, University of Michigan Press, 1995.
Tamerius defines feminist speeches as any speech that advances women’s wellbeing by eliminating dis-
crimination, addressing women’s unique physiological and socioeconomic conditions, or achieving
public recognition of women’s contributions to society (1995: 105).
22 K. Cramer Walsh, ‘Female Legislators and the Women’s Rights Agenda’ in C.S. Rosenthal (ed),
Women Transforming Congress, University of Oklahoma Press, 2002.
23 K. Bird, ‘Gendering Parliamentary Questions’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations,
7, 2005, 353 – 70.
24 S. Broughton and S. Palmieri, ‘Gendered Contributions to Parliamentary Debates: The Case of
Euthanasia’, Australian Journal of Political Science, 34, 1999, 29 –45.
25 K. Celis, ‘Substantive Representation of Women: The Representation of Women’s Interests and the
Impact of Descriptive Representation in the Belgium Parliament (1900 –1979)’, Journal of Women,
Politics, and Policy, 28, 2006, 85 –114. Unlike Celis, I categorize political discourse as indicative of
descriptive representation rather than substantive representation.
26 A. G. Ayata and F. Tütüncü, ‘Critical Acts Without a Critical Mass: The Substantive Representation
of Women in the Turkish Parliament’, Parliamentary Affairs, 61, 2008, 461 –75.
27 K. Celis, 2006.
28 C.J. Shogun, ‘Speaking Out: An Analysis of Democratic and Republican Women-Invoked Rhetoric in
the 105th Congress’, Women & Politics, 23, 2001, 129 – 46.
29 D. Walsh, ‘No Presence Without Power: Deliberation and Women’s Representation in South Africa’,
Paper presented at the Midwest Political Science Association conference, March 2008.
30 M.L. Krook, Quotas for Women Worldwide, Oxford University Press, 2009; A.M. Tripp and
A. Kang, 2008.
31 A.G. Ayata and F. Tütüncü, 2008.
32 S. Franceschet, et al. forthcoming.
33 J. Mansbridge, 2005.
34 S. Franceschet and J. Piscopo, 2008.
35 P. Chaney, ‘Critical Mass, Deliberation and the Substantive Representation of Women: Evidence from
the UK’s Devolution Programme’, Political Studies, 54, 2006, 691 –714.
36 C.V. Xydias, ‘Inviting More Women to the Party: Gender Quotas and Women’s Substantive
Representation in Germany’, International Journal of Sociology, 37, 2008, 52 –66.
37 Belgium now applies a national-level quota law, though the Celis study cited here predates this
statute.
38 For adoption, see G. Bonder and M. Nari, ‘The 30% Quota Law: A Turning Point for Women’s
Political Participation’, in A. Brill (ed), A Rising Public Voice: Women in Politics Worldwide, The
Feminist Press, 1993; for adoption and policy consequences see J. Marx, J. Bonner and
M. Caminotti, Las Legisladoras: Género y polı́tica en Argentina y Brasil, Siglo XXI, 2007; for policy
consequences, see S. Franceschet and J. Piscopo, 2008.
39 M. Jones, ‘Explaining the High Level of Party Discipline in the Argentine Congress’, in
S. Morgenstern and B. Nacif (eds), Legislative Politics in Latin America, Cambridge University Press,
2002; M. Jones, ‘The Recruitment and Selection of Legislative Candidates in Argentina’, in
S. Morgenstern and P. S. Siavelis (eds), Pathways to Power, The Pennsylvania State University Press,
2004.

40 This analysis of plenary speech practice in Argentina is drawn from my fieldwork in Argentina, con-
ducted over two months in 2005 and six months in 2009. Interviews with over 40 legislators and
many parliamentary aides covered the process of, and the logic behind, making plenary speeches.
41 While conducting this comparison in the pre-quota and post-quota periods would be ideal for captur-
ing how much of female legislators’ greater debate participation is attributable to the quota, the
unavailability of congressional transcripts from the pre-quota ( pre-1991) period makes this compari-
son impossible.
42 R. Heath, L. Schwindt-Bayer and M. Taylor-Robinson, ‘Women on the Sidelines: Women’s
Representation on Committees in Latin American Legislatures’, American Journal of Political Science,
49, 2005, 420 –36.
43 R. Heath, L. Schwindt-Bayer and M. Taylor-Robinson, 2005.
44 See also S. Franceschet and J. Piscopo, 2008, as well as J. Borner, M. Caminotti, J. Marx and
A.L. Rodrı́guez Gustá, Ideas, presencia, y jerarquı́as polı́ticas: Claroscuros de la igualdad de género
en el Congreso Nacional de Argentina, Promoteo, 2009. Two other significant women’s rights
measures, the 2002 extension of the quota law to labor union directorates and the 2006 approval of
the Optional Protocol to the United Nations’ Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of
Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), were not debated in the lower house of Congress.
45 To find the debate transcript, visit http://www1.hcdn.gov.ar/sesionesxml/reuniones.shtml. Enter the
date of the session on which the law reached the floor (14 April 2001 for Salud Sexual and 28 June
2006 for Anticoncepción Quirúrgica).
46 All translations from Spanish to English are my own.
47 M. Htun and T.J. Power, ‘Gender, Parties, and Support for Equal Rights in the Brazilian Congress’,
Latin American Politics and Society, 48, 2006, 83 – 104.
48 The partisan values in Table 3 are calculated using data from E. Alemán, E. Calvo, M. Jones and
N. Kaplan, ‘Comparing Co-sponsorship and Roll-Call Ideal Points’, Legislative Studies Quarterly, 34,
2010, 87 – 116. Alemán et al. use co-sponsorship data from the Argentine Congress to generate ideal
points for all parties elected from 1999 –2007. Using their calculations, I arrayed the ideal points on a
five-point ideological scale, but re-measured them for each presidential term so as to account for
parties’ shifts in ideology over time.
49 Readers interested in the quantitative frequencies that led to this concept-mapping may contact me
for the data.
50 D. Lopreite, ‘Challenging the Argentina Gender Regime? The Politics of Reproductive Rights After
Democratization’, Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science
Association, August 2008.

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Parliamentary Affairs Vol. 64 No.

3, 2011, 448– 472

Rethinking Descriptive Representation: Rendering

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THE RECENT popularity of legislative quota laws has generated or

ranging from how to operationalise ‘group interests’ to how ‘much’

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legislators’ plenary speeches on sexual health reform, a policy area

Theoretical expectations about descriptive representation

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worry that descriptive representation will essentialise groups: female

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of each function are distinct. For instance, introducing a bill to expand

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Rendering women with and without quotas

studied committee debates in the Colorado legislature to conclude that

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Even so, women are relative newcomers to parliamentary chambers

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Plenary discussions in Argentina

1. Women in Argentine Congress since quota law

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included implementing mandates to place women’s names in every

government website for public consumption. Examining these speeches

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Contextualising women’s participation in the Argentine

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Table 2 contextualises Argentine female legislators’ participation by

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Total Women Men Women Men Total

columns calculates the total percentage of female/male speakers given

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chamber floor. For both comparison categories, male legislators domi-

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Rendering women’s sexual health in Argentina

they referenced the equal protections guarantees in the Argentine

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3. Deputies participating in the Salud Sexual and Anticoncepción Quirúrgica debates

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reproductive capacities of poor women. Figure 1 shows how these nar-

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CONSERVATIVE VISIONS OF WOMEN AND Female deputies

for couples would jointly undertake the decision to seek surgical

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PROGRESSIVE DEPICTIONS OF WOMEN’S ROLES. Unlike the conservative

women—to the free exercise of their sexuality, to their sexual rights,

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Pérez—female legislators from right and left parties—are constituting a

NARRATIVES OF WELLBEING. Lopreite, writing on sexual health reform

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Bárbara Espı́nola, also speaking in the Salud Seuxal debate, character-

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NARRATIVES OF PLURALISM AND FAIRNESS. Female legislators’ emphasis

person to manage his or her own body’. Likewise, Juliana Marino

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GLORIFYING THE POOR. Some may characterise female elites’ claims

championed poor women’s ability to raise and love as many as thirteen

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representatives participate in all aspects of lawmaking, and speaking

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Department of Political Science

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