Women Want an Answer! Field Experiments on Elected Officials and Gender Bias

Abstract

Are elected officials more responsive to men than women inquiring about access to government services? Women face discrimination in many realms of politics, but evidence is limited on whether such discrimination extends to interactions between women and elected officials. In recent years, several field experiments have examined public officials’ responsiveness. The majority focused on racial bias in the USA, while the few experiments outside the USA were usually single-country studies. We explore gender bias with the first large-scale audit experiment in five countries in Europe (France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, and Netherlands) and six in Latin America (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Uruguay). A citizen alias whose gender is randomized contacts members of parliament about unemployment benefits or healthcare services. The results are surprising. Legislators respond significantly more to women (+3% points), especially in Europe (+4.3% points). In Europe, female legislators in particular reply substantially more to women (+8.4% points).

Are Politicians More Responsive Towards Men’s or Women’s Service Delivery Requests? A Survey Experiment with Ugandan Politicians

“…USA (Thomsen and Sanders 2020). In a first-of-its-kind cross-national study, no gender bias was found in responsiveness to requests for personal help to access public services in Latin American countries, while politicians in Europe were more responsive to female constituentsa finding driven by female politicians (Magni and Ponce de Leon 2020).…”

Should we conduct correspondence study field experiments with political elites?

“…Correspondence study field experiments (CSFEs) with political elites have proliferated in recent years (for an overview of older work, see Costa, 2017; recent work includes Bol et al, 2021; Breunig et al, 2020; Dinesen et al, 2021; Giger et al, 2020; Habel and Birch, 2019; Landgrave, 2020; Magni and Ponce de Leon, 2020; Rhinehart, 2020; Thomsen and Sanders, 2020; Wiener, 2020). In most of these experiments, unsolicited emails that conceal their true purpose are sent to elected officials.…”

Ethics Audits in Cross-National Research: Experiences from Correspondence Study Field Experiments with National Politicians in Four European Democracies

“…Compared to laboratory or survey experiments, they can be conducted with high external validity because they do not suffer from low response rates or self-selection bias as non-responses also count as an observation, and artificiality is less of a problem as they take place in a natural context. As such, field experiments provide important insights into the input legitimacy of democracy, such as racial discrimination (Broockman, 2013; Dinesen et al, 2021; Gell-Redman et al, 2018), gender bias (Magni and de Leon, 2020; Thomsen and Sanders, 2020; Wiener, 2020), the electoral prerequisites of geographic representation (Bol et al, 2021; Breunig et al, 2021; Giger et al, 2020), and responsiveness to public-policy preferences (Butler and Nickerson, 2011; Butler et al, 2012). In this vein, field experiments help us to critically assess the quality of democracy and identify needs for reform as well as unsubstantiated fears.…”