Revisiting Gender's Effect on Free Voting in the British House of Commons.

Previous studies of the legislative behavior of British Members of Parliament (MPs) during free votes have failed to produce consistent findings regarding the effects of gender on free voting behavior. Using an original dataset of twenty-seven free votes taken in the 2005 British House of Commons on the topics of House of Lords reform, the disclosure of MP candidate addresses, MP allowances, smoking, abortion, fertility treatment, and the use of sibling stem cells, we use logistic regression and predicted probabilities to account for the role of gender in free vote choice. After controlling for partisan, personal and constituency factors, we find that gender is a significant predictor of voting behavior for issues involving women's rights and, to some extent, the needs of children and families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]