Women’s Interests and Parliamentary Political Participation in I.R Iran; A Regression Study

This article focuses on the empirically assessment of the women’s representation in the Islamic Consultative Assembly of Iran based upon the theory of “the politics of presence”. This theory emphasizes on this hypothesis in Iran that “female politicians to a greater extent than male politicians represent the interests of women”. On the theoretical level, the concept of women’s interests divides into three components: the recognition of women as a social category, acknowledgement of the unequal balance of power between the sexes and the occurrence of policies to increase the presence of female citizens in different fields. On the empirical level, this corresponds to measurements indicating female versus male MPs’ attitudes and behavior in areas such as gender equality and social welfare policy. The data for this research are provided from a parliamentary survey study executed among 68 representatives and 135 voters after 10th Islamic Consultative Assembly election in a case study. The results show that female and male voters have different interests, but the priorities of female citizens are given less scope than the priorities of male citizens in the Parliament decisions. Moreover, female representatives give more importance to the women’s priorities and gender equality than male representatives. The main result is that the theory of the politics of presence gains strong empirical support and a significant contribution for the positive effect of women’s presence in parliament and the theories of representative democracy.