Party elites and women candidates: The shape of bias

Niven, David

doi:10.1080/1554477x.1998.9970846

Cited by 86 publications

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“…Thus, a female candidate in this situation might be more closely attuned to the policy needs and personal experiences of many citizens -arguably, qualities that would benefit any policy-maker. Yet such skills tend to be overlooked by selectorates in favor of more "traditional," prestigious demonstrations of competence, as evidenced by the types of candidate selected and prior research on candidate selection preferences (Krook 2006;Niven 1998;Norris and Lovenduski 1995).…”

Section: Rethinking the Criteria For Being A Good Representativementioning

confidence: 99%

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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Section: Rethinking the Criteria For Being A Good Representativementioning

confidence: 99%

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

2014

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“…26,27 Although there is little evidence of certain overt forms of gender discrimination such as voter bias in contemporary electoral contexts, 18,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37 women continue to face stereotyping by voters, 38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46 in the media's treatment of them, 39,47,48,49,50,51,52,53 and in political recruitment. 4,18,44,54,55,56,57,58 Institutional and structural factors in the political system also matter. For example, the advantages of incumbency in U.S. politics serve as a deterrent to all emergent candidates-regardless of gender 59 -and therefore help perpetuate the overrepresentation of men in elected offices.…”

Section: Demand-side Factorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In particular, women candidates face the possibility of sexism in media coverage 39,47,48,49,50,51,52,53 and recruitment, 57,58,172 online harassment, 173 violence, 174 or fundraising, where women have to work much harder to raise similar amounts as men. 11,175 Women may also face problematic voter stereotypes associated with their fertility 176 or lack thereof, 177 or how old their children are.…”

Section: Environmental Influences: Social and Cultural Environmental mentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender, risk assessment, and political ambition

Sweet-Cushman

2016

Polit. life sci.

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ABSTRACT. In the United States, women have long held the right to vote and can participate fully in the political process, and yet they are underrepresented at all levels of elected office. Worldwide, men's dominance in the realm of politics has also been the norm. To date, scholars have focused on supply-side and demand-side explanations of women's underrepresentation but differences in how men and women assess electoral risk (the risk involved in seeking political office) are not fully explained. To fill this gap, I explore how evolutionary theory offers insights into gendered differences in political ambition and the evaluation of electoral risk. Using the framework of life-history theory, I hypothesize that both cognitive and environmental factors in human evolution, particularly as they relate to sexual selection and social roles, have shaped the psychology of ambition in gendered ways affecting contemporary politics. Cognitive risk-assessment mechanisms evolving in the hominid line came to be expressed differently in females and males, in women and men. These gendered expressions plausibly reflect differentiable environmental pressures in the past and may help explain behaviors in and barriers to women's electoral political activity in the present. If so, then the success of efforts to increase such activity -or, regressively, to suppress it -may be better understood.Key words: Political ambition, gender differences, evolutionary theory, electoral risk assessment M ale officeholders are the norm in political representation both worldwide and in the United States in particular. Across the globe, gender parity in political representation is unusual, and instances of women's overrepresentation are extremely rare. 1 In the United States, women make up slightly more than half of the population and earned the right to vote and participate fully in the political process many decades ago. Nevertheless, in recent U.S. history, less than a quarter of state legislators have been women; women have held few state executive offices; and women have comprised less than 20 percent of the membership of the U.S. Congress. 2 Proponents of greater gender equality in U.S. political representation continue to wonder why more women do not run for or hold political office when so many of the societal and structural barriers to their participation have diminished. The leading explanations tend to focus on candidate emergence and cultural doi: 10.1017/pls.2016.13Correspondence: Jennie Sweet-Cushman, Department of History, Political Science, and International Studies, Chatham University, 0 Woodland Road, Pittsburgh, PA 15232. Email: jsweetcushman@chatham.edu and psychological factors that contribute to men and women having different levels of political ambition. 3,4 However, these theories do not address what I consider to be critical questions: What role does electoral risk play in political ambition, and can evolutionary theory provide insight into gendered differences in risk assessment and political ambition? I argue that the ...

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“…On the contrary, quotas are likely to facilitate the promotion of women, which can in turn have tremendous symbolic and practical consequences. By improving female politicians' access to leadership positions, quotas likely have knock-on effects related to the selection of political candidates (Cheng and Tavits 2011;Niven 2010;Kittilson 2006), the appointment of ministers (Dowding and Dumont 2009), and 3 the content of the policy agenda (McAllister 2007;Poguntke and Webb 2005). Together, our findings contribute to the growing work on electoral reform, political representation, gender and politics, and quota impact.…”

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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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Party elites and women candidates: The shape of bias

Cited by 86 publications

References 0 publications

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

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

Gender, risk assessment, and political ambition

Gender Quotas and Women's Political Leadership

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