Can gender quotas in candidate lists empower women? Evidence from a regression discontinuity design

Bagues, Manuel; Campa, Pamela

doi:10.1016/j.jpubeco.2020.104315

Cited by 72 publications

(54 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…On the other hand, in contrast to the findings from the three previous studies, Geys and Sorensen (2019) see no spillovers of a candidate list quota for the local executive board in Nor-way on women's political representation in different local-level positions. Similarly, Bagues and Campa (2017) find that after three rounds of local elections under a quota on candidate lists in Spain, women still do not reach influential offices such as party leader or mayor. Also, Ferreira and Gyourko (2014) see no spillovers from electing a female mayor in US cities on the political success of other female mayor or Congress candidates in the long run.…”

Section: Women's Empowerment Through Politicsmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…This is suggested by studies which find that female politicians improve the overall quality in the pool of politicians (Baltrunaite, Bello, Casarico, and Profeta, 2014;Besley, Folke, Persson, and Rickne, 2017). Moreover, several empirical studies have investigated whether male and female politicians in charge of political institutions differ in terms of quality with the evidence suggesting that female politicians are at least as qualified as male politicians (Bagues and Campa, 2017), and that women elected via quotas are no less qualified than their competitively elected female counterparts (Weeks and Baldez, 2015). 13 Therefore, it is not clear whether the estimates for the effect of female politicians on policy outcomes and the quality 13 This relates to findings from the labor economics literature that affirmative action to reduce discrimination does not necessarily compromise performance or efficiency (Holzer and Neumark, 2000).…”

Section: Women's Contribution To the Quality Of Institutionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Female political representation and substantive effects on policies: A literature review

Hessami

Fonseca

2020

European Journal of Political Economy

157

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The share of women in political offices has increased considerably over the past few decades in almost every country in the world. Does this matter for policy outcomes? This is the first paper to provide a literature review on the substantive effects of female representation on policies. In developing countries, the increase in female political representation has caused a better provision of public goods, especially with regard to education and health. In developed countries, higher female representation has not affected public policies as measured by spending patterns. However, more recent evidence shows that female representation has induced changes in parliamentary deliberations and specific policy choices (e.g. more public child care) that may not be reflected in the observable composition of public spending. Finally, higher female representation has improved institutional quality by reducing corruption and rent-extraction by those in power.

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Section: Women's Empowerment Through Politicsmentioning

confidence: 97%

Section: Women's Contribution To the Quality Of Institutionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Female political representation and substantive effects on policies: A literature review

Hessami

Fonseca

2020

European Journal of Political Economy

157

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“…In this study, we make what we believe is an important empirical contribution to the literature on the effects of legislated candidate quotas on female descriptive representation. We capitalise on the rapid developments in the area of synthetic control methodology (Abadie et al 2010;Xu 2017) and rigorously study the causal impact of such quotas in national parliamentary elections held under preferential voting PR rules; to date, comparably rigorous evidence, encompassing studies of both open-and closed-list PR, has been offered mainly with respect to local elections (Baltrunaite et al 2014(Baltrunaite et al , 2019Besley et al 2017;Bagues & Campa 2021; albeit see Weeks 2016). Our results fit into the general picture outlined by previous studies of the effects of legislated candidate quotas in preferential voting systems.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Legislated candidate quotas and women's descriptive representation in preferential voting systems

Górecki

Pierzgalski

2021

European J Political Res

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Recent decades have seen a worldwide diffusion of electoral gender quotas, an institution designed to enhance women's political representation. This has sparked scholars' interest in the actual effects of quotas, including their impact on female descriptive (numeric) representation in national legislatures. As with many other issues within the domain of comparative politics, however, establishing causality with respect to the effect of quota laws is intrinsically difficult. In this article, we attempt to overcome these difficulties. We apply the generalised synthetic control method to study the impact of legislated candidate quotas on the descriptive parliamentary representation of women in three European countries: Belgium, Greece and Poland. As these states elect their national parliaments by means of variants of a proportional representation system with preferential voting for candidates, we compare their levels of female descriptive representation to a set of corresponding figures observed for a 'synthetic control' unit, comprising 16 European countries that implement fundamentally similar electoral systems but do not have legislated candidate quotas in place. The quota effects that we obtain vary substantially among the three cases analysed. The apparent effect for Belgium is strong, while much weaker effects are observed for the two other states. Relying on the extant literature, we qualitatively interpret these results, putting forward a number of conjectures as to how contextual factors can contribute to the strength and persistence of quota effects. We conclude that the impact of legislated candidate quotas is essentially limited, albeit it may be magnified under favourable contextual conditions, such as those which occurred in Belgium.

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“…(2010) and Baltrunaite et al (2014) show that even temporary quotas increased women's representation in politics and led to higher quality politicians (both men and women) being elected to office. Conversely, Bagues and Campa (2020) and Lassebie (2020) find no evidence that quotas in Spain and France led to systematic improvements in the career progression of women.…”

Section: Lab-in-the-field Experimentsmentioning

confidence: 93%

Lab-in-the-Field Experiments: Perspectives from Research on Gender

et al. 2021

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This paper highlights t he contributions made b y lab-in-the-field experiments, which are also known as artefactual, framed and extra-lab experiments. We present a curated sample of lab-in-the-field experiments and discuss ho w t he y c an b e conducted o n t heir o w n o r combined with conventional laboratory experiments, natural experiments, randomised control trials and surveys to provide unique insights into the behaviour of a diverse population. Using our recent research on gender and leadership, w e demonstrate h o w lab-in-the-field experiments hav e offered new perspectives ab o ut gender differences i n decision-making. Finally, w e out line t h e e t hic al and implementational challenges researchers may face while conducting these experiments, and share some of the strategies we employed to address them.

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Can gender quotas in candidate lists empower women? Evidence from a regression discontinuity design

Cited by 72 publications

References 43 publications

Female political representation and substantive effects on policies: A literature review

Female political representation and substantive effects on policies: A literature review

Legislated candidate quotas and women's descriptive representation in preferential voting systems

Lab-in-the-Field Experiments: Perspectives from Research on Gender

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