Does the Election of a Female Leader Clear the Way for More Women in Politics?

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Baskaran, Thushyanthan; Hessami, Zohal
• 署名单位: Universitat Siegen; University of Konstanz
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-ECONOMIC POLICY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7731
• DOI: 10.1257/pol.20170045
• 发表日期: 2018
• 页码: 95-121
• 关键词: gender quotas; suffrage; INDIA; POWER

摘要

Women remain underrepresented in politics and it remains unclear how this might change. In this paper, we investigate whether female council candidates receive more preferential votes when a female mayor has been recently elected into office. We hand collect data for 109,017 candidates in four open-list local council elections (2001-2016) in all 426 municipalities of a German state. Based on RDD estimations for close mixed-gender races, we show that female council candidates advance more from their initial list rank when the mayor is female. This effect spreads to neighboring municipalities and leads to a rising share of female council members. (JEL D72, J16, J71)