Change in Women's Descriptive Representation and the Belief in Women's
                        Ability to Govern: A Virtuous Cycle

Alexander, Amy C.

doi:10.1017/s1743923x12000487

Cited by 133 publications

(142 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…Other research documents their influence on the representation of women's interests (Devlin and Elgie 2008;Franceschet and Piscopo 2008;Chattopadhyay and Duflo 2004;Beaman et al 2009). Still others examine the symbolic effects of quotas, including their impact on women's career ambitions (Beaman et al 2012) and political participation and engagement (Barnes andBurchard 2013, Kittilson andSchwindt-Bayer 2012), as well as beliefs about women's ability to govern (Alexander 2012). …”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender Quotas and Women's Political Leadership

O’Brien

Rickne

2014

SSRN Journal

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may AbstractThough more than 100 countries have adopted gender quotas, the impacts of these reforms on women's political leadership remain largely unknown. We exploit a quasi-experiment-a zipper quota imposed by the Swedish Social Democratic national party on municipal party groups-to examine quotas' effect on women's selection and survival as leaders within their parties. We find that those municipalities where the quota had a larger impact became more likely to appoint female leaders, but not more likely to support the reelection of women to the post. Extending this analysis, we show that the quota increased the number of qualified female candidates without increasing the diversity among women within the group. These results lend support to the notion that quotas may have an acceleration effect on women's representation in leadership posts and help dispel the myth that quotas trade short-term gains in women's descriptive representation for long-term exclusion from political power.Keywords: gender quotas; political leadership; party leaders; political careers; electoral reforms; women and politics; subnational politics JEL Codes: G34, G38, J48, J20 The widespread adoption of gender quotas is one of the most important political developments of the modern era. As these reforms have spread around the world, there is increasing interest in their broader impacts (Franceschet, Krook, and Piscopo 2012). Despite our growing understanding of quotas' broader impacts, their effect on women's appointment to higher political office remains unknown. In particular, no study has yet considered whether quotas help or hinder women's selection to, and survival in, leadership posts within political organizations. This is a surprising oversight, both because of the potential significance of women's position in the political hierarchy for their descriptive, substantive, and symbolic representation and the conflicting expectations generated by the literature. On the one hand, quotas may increase the supply of women eligible for leadership posts and give them more opportunities to join forces to support other women for top office. This means that quotas could have a positive "acceleration effect" on women's access to top political posts. On the other hand, both scholars and activists have linked increases in "quota women" to stigmatization and backlash effects, which means that quotas could produce a trade-off effect in which immediate gains...

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confidence: 99%

Gender Quotas and Women's Political Leadership

O’Brien

Rickne

2014

SSRN Journal

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“…MLM allows testing how variations in strength of microlevel relationships across higher-level units correlate with differences in contextual characteristics (e.g., whether variation in the employment-political participation linkage across years, countries, or states correlates with differences in welfare expenditures), without the risk of overestimating statistical significance. Alexander (2012) and Luhiste (2015) are clear examples from the Politics & Gender articles reviewed.…”

Section: Theorizing and Modeling Context Dependencymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Second, while politics and gender studies tend to focus on how clearly gendered contextual variables, such as the proportion of women in Parliament (Alexander 2012), shape individual-level relationships, MLM also stimulates us to formalize, systematize, and demonstrate claims about ostensible gender-neutral structures having gendered implications for individual-level relationships. For instance, it is generally acknowledged that the type of electoral system has gendered implication for representation, but how do differences between PR and majoritarian systems influence the impact of individual characteristics on gender differences in political participation?…”

Section: Gender and Multilevel Modelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multilevel Analysis as a Tool to Understand the Spatio-Temporality of Gender

Spierings¹

2016

Pol & Gen

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Gender: "culturally specific characteristics associated with masculinity and femininity . . . a wide range of . . . social roles assigned to men and women historically and cross-culturally" (Hawkesworth 2013, 36, emphasis added)Intersectionality: "that race, class, sexual orientation, nationality, and gender are not discrete markers of difference but rather intersection social structures of inequality experienced by individuals in specific social locations" (Ewig and Ferree 2013, 442, emphasis added)As illustrated by these definitions from the Oxford Handbook of Gender and Politics, context dependency is a defining characteristic of gender, since gender and intersectional inequalities differ spatially and temporarily in how they are organized. It is on this issue of context dependency where gender studies scholars often collide with (the application and interpretation) of regression-based statistical analysis in debates about quantitative methods (see Spierings 2012). In this reflection, I will briefly address where this tension comes from, focusing particularly on how (statistical) relationships vary in occurrence and strength between contexts. Next, I discuss three rather common archetypical responses to this tension that do little to resolve the issue. Subsequently, I focus on more profound solutions, including multilevel regression models, which challenge gender scholars to specify and develop their theoretical arguments on how and why relationships are context dependent. The different, bad, and better ways in which to deal with possible context dependency are illustrated by an assessment of their

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“…The symbolic aspect of representation is an expanding, yet somewhat diffuse field of research, related to the meaning that representatives have for those being represented, for instance the importance of female role models for the general perceptions of women in politics (Alexander 2012). Symbolic representation is also linked to the legitimacy of the political regime at large.…”

Section: Symbolic Representationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Women's Political Representation

Dahlerup

2016

The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Gender and Sexuality Studies

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The continuous underrepresentation of women and of various minorities in elected political assemblies challenges classic democratic theory, which focuses on procedures, on the how , while neglecting the who of representation, be it in the ancient city‐state of Athens or in modern deliberative governance structures. Political representation is embedded in the power structure of the political system. In most political systems the political parties are the gatekeepers to elected positions. When the voters enter the polling station, the nomination and rank order of candidates for election have already been decided on by the political parties. Historically, representation predates democracy, as in the representation of noblemen, priests, and the bourgeoisie in the old estates. The present discussion of equal representation of all citizens in relation to their share of the population is linked to modern democracy. Yet, increasingly, even senior non‐democratic countries select their political assemblies through direct public elections, which has made the question of who the representatives are a global issue. This entry distinguishes between descriptive, substantive, and symbolic representation.

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Change in Women's Descriptive Representation and the Belief in Women's Ability to Govern: A Virtuous Cycle

Cited by 133 publications

References 37 publications

Gender Quotas and Women's Political Leadership

Gender Quotas and Women's Political Leadership

Multilevel Analysis as a Tool to Understand the Spatio-Temporality of Gender

Women's Political Representation

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