The Assembly's gender balance has had a big influence over its consensual style of politics, researchers said today.

In interviews with academics, AMs said the near equal number of men and women in Cardiff Bay was noticeable in the way the Assembly does business.

The proportion of female members was 40% in 1999, 50% in 2003 and is currently 47% - 28 AMs out of 60. In contrast, only 19.5% of Westminster MPs are women.

Professor Nickie Charles, from the University of Warwick's Department of Sociology, said Plaid Cymru and the Labour Party had made a big contribution to the make up of the chamber with selection policies that favoured female candidates.

She said: "This gender balance is seen as having an effect on the style of interactions between politicians, both cross-party and within party.

"According to many AMs, women tend to do politics differently from men and this is often described as being more consensual than adversarial.

"The Assembly is a new political institution associated with a consensual political style, an inclusive politics, and working arrangements which recognise the caring responsibilities of those working within it.’’ The Assembly was set up in a "family friendly’’ way, she added. Business is conducted within office hours as much as possible, with no late-night sittings in the Senedd.

The researchers from Warwick and Swansea universities asked AMs for their impressions of how the gender balance had changed politics.

One anonymous male Labour AM said: "It makes a difference to the culture in which group meetings are conducted, as I've said we have fierce disagreement in group meetings but it is conducted with the complete absence of chest thumping and table thumping.’’ AMs agreed women had an impact on the type of issues discussed, with more emphasis on what one AM called "non-traditional areas’’.

"Domestic violence is on the agenda, equal pay is on the agenda and all those kinds of really important issues that probably wouldn't be there if there wasn't such a high number of women.’’