Time and Date: 11am, Friday September 23 in China time

(8pm, Sept.22 in California, US time丨11pm, Sept.22 Eastern time)

Speaker: Yue Hou, Janice and Julian Bers Assistant Professor in the Social Sciences, University of Pennsylvania

Host: Jaehee Choi, Lecturer in Public Policy, Duke Kunshan University

Zoom: 959 7508 5619; Passcode: 2022

Abstract

This paper presents one of the first studies of the political behavior of female members of China’s national legislature—the National People’s Congress (NPC). Female legislators have consistently held about 20% of seats in the NPC in the past two decades because of a gender quota, but they sponsor about 44% of all legislative bills and more than half of bills relevant to women’s rights and interests in the 12th NPC. Among sponsors, women on average sponsor more bills (4.8 bills) than men (3.1 bills). We propose two potential mechanisms that drive women’s comparative productiveness and are unique to women: (i) women are more collaborative than their male colleagues; (ii) female leadership encourages female participation. Legislative plans show that bills sponsored by women are considered as important as those sponsored by men. We next analyze 2,366 bills submitted during the 12th NPC and show that female legislators are not only more engaged in women’s issues; they are also disproportionately more active than men in the traditionally “male dominated” areas including economics and finance, foreign affairs, rural affairs and environmental issues. Our findings demonstrate that underrepresented regime outsiders (women) can carve out a place to amplify their voices, outperform insiders, and shape policy directions in an authoritarian legislature.

Bio

Yue Hou is the Janice and Julian Bers in the Social Sciences in the political science department at the University of Pennsylvania. During 2022-23, She is a visiting scholar at Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions (SCCEI). Her research interests include political economy, authoritarian politics, and identity politics, with a regional focus on China. Her work has appeared in the Journal of Politics, Journal of Experimental Political Science, Quarterly Journal of Political Science, Journal of Comparative Economics, Social Science Quarterly and China Leadership Monitor, and has been featured in the New York Times, Boston Review and South China Morning Post. Her first book, the Private Sector in Public Office: Selective Property Rights in China (Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics, Cambridge University Press, 2019), addresses the long-standing puzzle of how China’s private sector manages to grow without secure property rights. She also writes articles for Chinese media outlets including the Southern Weekly and Tencent ipress. She received her PhD in Political Science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and BA in Economics and Mathematics from Grinnell College.  

The China Governance Lecture Series is co-sposored by DKU Public Policy Group, Center for the Study of Contemporary China (CSCC) and the Environment Research Center (ERC).