COMPARATIVE RESEARCH AND ELECTORAL SYSTEMS - LESSONS FROM FRANCE AND ITALY

This paper focuses on women's representation in the French National Assembly and in the Italian Chamber of Deputies since 1946 and attempts carefully to elucidate the relationships among electoral systems, economic change, and type of political party in explaining women's access to legislative office. The findings strongly suggest caution in accepting claims that proportional representation systems advantage women running for office, and concludes that aggregate data analysis across many nations, focusing on electoral structure at the expense of other important factors, has obscured our understanding of the mechanisms that impede or facilitate women's access to elective office. The paper ends with reflections on doing comparative research on women and politics.