This essay reviews two research programs. The first focuses on variations in the number of
women elected to national parliaments in the world (descriptive representation), and the
second focuses on effects of women's presence in parliament (substantive representation).
The theory of the politics of presence (Phillips 1995) provides reasons for expecting a link
between descriptive and substantive representation. The safest position would be to say that
results are “mixed” when it comes to empirical support for the theory of the politics of …