Gender Representation in Expert Groups

Expert institutions are increasingly expected not only to provide the best professional expertise but also to ensure equal presence of women. Yet while there is an extensive literature on descriptive gender representation in bureaucracies and courts, we largely lack studies that examine patterns of women’s presence on expert advisory bodies. Drawing on large-n data on the composition of Norwegian expert advisory commissions, the paper investigates and evaluates how the share of women on these commissions has developed over the last half-century. It finds that while overall gender parity was achieved in recent decades, women remain strongly under-represented among commission chairs, particularly academic chairs, and among commission members from economics, an especially important policy discipline. Normatively speaking, the developments towards parity are promising, and we find no empirical confirmation of the worry that proportional representation and competence requirements are in tension. On the contrary, persistent gender gaps among economists on commissions and academic chairs may endanger adequate provision of expertise into policy-making.