American Economic Journal:
Economic Policy
ISSN 1945-7731 (Print) | ISSN 1945-774X (Online)
Does the Election of a Female Leader Clear the Way for More Women in Politics?
American Economic Journal: Economic Policy
vol. 10,
no. 3, August 2018
(pp. 95–121)
(Complimentary)
Abstract
Women remain underrepresented in politics and it remains unclear how this might change. In this paper, we investigate whether female council candidates receive more preferential votes when a female mayor has been recently elected into office. We hand collect data for 109,017 candidates in four open-list local council elections (2001-2016) in all 426 municipalities of a German state. Based on RDD estimations for close mixed-gender races, we show that female council candidates advance more from their initial list rank when the mayor is female. This effect spreads to neighboring municipalities and leads to a rising share of female council members.Citation
Baskaran, Thushyanthan, and Zohal Hessami. 2018. "Does the Election of a Female Leader Clear the Way for More Women in Politics?" American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 10 (3): 95–121. DOI: 10.1257/pol.20170045Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- D72 Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
- J16 Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
- J71 Labor Discrimination
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