Replication Data for The weight on her shoulders: Marginalization of women legislators in parliaments and substantive representation of women

Studies have widely documented that women’s descriptive representation in parliaments enhances their substantive representation. We probe this relationship under varying levels of women’s collective and individual marginality based on an original dataset documenting the parliamentary behavior of Israeli legislators over the course of 11 parliamentary terms (1977–2015). Using several measures of individual- level marginality, we show that marginalized female legislators are more prone to engage in gender-related parliamentary activity than their less marginal counterparts, albeit only under a certain threshold of women’s marginality as a group. The paper elucidates the dynamic nature of the relationship between descriptive and substantive representation of disadvantaged groups by demonstrating that it is contingent on their collective standing in parliament and on the marginality of individual legislators as manifested in their strategic choices.