The Gender Sensitivity of Spanish Regional Parliaments: Reality or Fiction?

The representation of women in parliaments across Europe has increased in recent years. This is shown by the increase of the average presence of women MPs in national parliaments (EU-28) which stands at 28.4% of women representatives. However, despite this progress, some studies highlight the difficulty to get an equitable representation in parliaments due to the rigidity of political institutions (Phillip 1995; Wängerud 2008).

A quick process of feminization of all regional chambers has taken place in Spain; its relatively balanced composition of gender seems a fact nowadays. By contrast, less is known about if this increase in women presence within regional parliaments has also been accompanied by institutional changes in parliaments; specifically in terms of WMPs segregation at parliamentary committees. Therefore, we try to answer the following question: Does the increase of women´s political representation relate to institutional changes in line with the notion of 'sensitive gendered parliaments'? Moreover, we want to explore whether this potential institutional changes have favored the power positions of WMPs within regional parliaments along time. Finally, we also discuss if there are changes in women representation, segregation and access to power positions within parliaments before and after the crisis period in Spain.

In order to answer to the previous questions, we use public data provided by spanish regional parliaments and extracted from the regional assemblies' website.