Gender Quotas and the Crisis of the Mediocre Man: Theory and Evidence from Sweden

Besley, Timothy; Folke, Olle; Persson, Torsten; Rickne, Johanna

doi:10.2139/ssrn.2465902

Cited by 34 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…Indeed, despite the concern that these policies bring undeserving or unambitious female candidates into political office, empirical studies typically indicate that quota women are as (or even more) qualified as their male counterparts. In Sweden, Besley et al (2013) find that party-based gender quotas have a positive effect on men's competence, mainly due to the replacement of mediocre male leaders with more competent men. Other studies have found a positive link between (both male and female) politicians' education levels and quota implementation (Baltrunaite et al 2014;Casas-Arce and Saiz 2011).…”

Section: Acceleration Effects: Quotas Facilitating Women's Access To mentioning

confidence: 94%

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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Section: Acceleration Effects: Quotas Facilitating Women's Access To mentioning

confidence: 94%

Gender Quotas and Women's Political Leadership

O’Brien

Rickne

2014

SSRN Journal

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“…We cannot automatically infer that men are present in these proportions because they were the best representatives available. Baltrunaite et al (2012) find that feminizing legislatures through quotas leads to an increase in the quality of both male and female politicians, a finding supported by Besley et al (2012) and Júlio and Tavares (2010), suggesting that the composition of legislatures pre-quotas was sub-optimal.…”

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confidence: 89%

“…Yet, many empirical studies of candidate quality still focus on income and education rather than the character traits driving candidate selection (Baltrunaite et al 2012;Besley et al 2012;Galasso and Nannicini 2011;Júlio and Tavares 2010;Kotakorpi and Poutvara 2010).…”

Section: Rethinking the Criteria For Being A Good Representativementioning

confidence: 99%

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Quotas for Men: Reframing Gender Quotas as a Means of Improving Representation for All

2014

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Gender quotas traditionally focus on the underrepresentation of women. Conceiving of quotas in this way perpetuates the status of men as the norm and women as the "other." Women are subject to heavy scrutiny of their qualifications and competence, whereas men's credentials go unchallenged. This paper calls for a normative shift towards the problem of overrepresentation, arguing that the quality of representation is negatively affected by having too large a group drawn from too narrow a talent pool. Curbing overrepresentation through ceiling quotas for men offers three core benefits. First, it promotes meritocracy by ensuring proper scrutiny of politicians of both sexes. Second, it provides an impetus for improving the criteria used to select and evaluate politicians. Third, neutralizing the overly masculinized environment within parliaments might facilitate better substantive and symbolic representation of both men and women. All citizens would benefit from these measures to increase the quality of representation.

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“…That is, instead of using candidates' level of education we focus on candidates' job (Besley et al, 2017). We estimated each candidate's salary based on the average national salary of her profession, which we used to compute coalitions' average salary.…”

Section: Alternative Dependent Variablesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Popularity Shocks and Political Selection

2018

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A B S T R A C TWe observe that popularity shocks are crucial for electoral accountability beyond their effects on voters' behaviors. By focusing on Brazilian politics, we show that the disclosure of audit reports on the (mis)use of federal funds by local administrators affects the type of candidates who stand for election. When the audit finds low levels of corruption, the parties supporting the incumbent select less-educated candidates. On the contrary, parties pick more-educated candidates when the audit reveals a high level of corruption. These effects are stronger in municipalities that have easier access to local media.

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Gender Quotas and the Crisis of the Mediocre Man: Theory and Evidence from Sweden

Cited by 34 publications

References 44 publications

Gender Quotas and Women's Political Leadership

Gender Quotas and Women's Political Leadership

Quotas for Men: Reframing Gender Quotas as a Means of Improving Representation for All

Popularity Shocks and Political Selection

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