Forty years of representativeness in the Spanish Congress from a gender perspective

Abstract

This paper aims to analyse the representativeness of the Congress of Deputies from a gender pespective. For it we use the Social Bias Index (IDS) through which the differences and similarities between the representatives and those represend can be studied. We also propose a Representativeness Index to study gobally all the characteristics studied by the IDS. Applying a gender pespective we have longitudinally studied the representativeness of women and male MP’s in respect of their reference group y society (women and male citizens). The main result is that women MP are more representative than their colleagues.