Do Ethnic Parties Exclude Women?

Holmsten, Stephanie S.; Moser, Robert G.; Slosar, Mary Catherine

doi:10.1177/0010414009347831

Cited by 26 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…This contradicts party-level research that has found left-wing parties to be associated with higher levels of women among party MPs (Caul 1999;Holmsten, Moser, and Slosar 2010). Left parties also have more women among the higher ranks of the party, which in turn can affect the percent of female candidates a party nominates and sends to the elected office (Kunovich and Paxton 2005;Kittilson 2006, 124;Cheng and Tavits 2011).…”

Section: Closed Vs Open Lists and Womenmentioning

confidence: 92%

Who stands in the way of women? Open vs. closed lists and candidate gender in Estonia

Allik

2015

East European Politics

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The literature on women's descriptive representation has looked at the debate on open and closed lists as a choice between electoral systems. This article instead focuses on whether voters or the parties are biased against female candidates. Using data from six Estonian elections, the article finds that voters are not consistently biased against female candidates and open lists do not necessarily decrease women's representation. However, unknown and non-incumbent female candidates fare significantly worse than similar men. The analysis also shows that parties do not place women in electable positions on closed lists, and closed lists do not improve women's representation.Keywords: candidate gender; voter preference; political parties; candidate selection; electoral systems; Estonia IntroductionIn most countries, women are far less likely to hold elected office than men, and there has been virtually no change in the gender composition of parliaments in some countries since the 1970s. This is the case despite advances made in women's education, employment rates, and substantial changes in public attitudes about female leadership. What or who is still standing in the way of electing women to office? This article looks at the debate on the effect of closed and open lists on women's representation, an issue that ultimately comes down to the question of whether political parties or voters disadvantage female candidates. While previous research in this area has tested theories about list types at the country level, this article reassesses the accuracy of this theory at the individual level, that is, at the level of the actual causal mechanism.I use data from six parliamentary elections in Estonia between 1992 and 2011. The Estonian case is insightful for many reasons. First, during the 20-year span, the electoral system has largely remained unchanged and simultaneously combines both closed and open lists. The uniqueness of the system allows us to test the effect of list types on women's election while holding everything pertaining to each election constant. Second, the availability of detailed party and candidate data permits the testing of the theories at the level of the mechanism rather than observing a relationship at the country level. Third, previous research on individual-level data has focused on candidate-centred systems -mainly single member districts (SMD), but also single transferable vote (STV) -and analysed only a single point in time. The Estonian data provide the opportunity to test the effect of gender on votes, election chances and list position in a party-centred proportional system over a 20-year period.

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Section: Closed Vs Open Lists and Womenmentioning

confidence: 92%

Who stands in the way of women? Open vs. closed lists and candidate gender in Estonia

Allik

2015

East European Politics

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“…If those parties' electoral support is largely concentrated, they will be less inclined to balance the ticket. Ethnic parties, for example, will mainly draw candidates from their own ethnic minority group since they are not interested in drawing support from other social groups (Holmsten, Moser, and Slosar, 2010).…”

Section: A General Theory Of Ticket-balancingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One could, however, make the argument that it does: strong fixation on the representation of one social group may impede the representation of other groups. The literature points to possible tensions between gender and minority group representation (Holmsten, Moser, and Slosar, 2010;Rahat and Malka, 2012). As a result, an alternative hypothesis is formulated:…”

Section: Independent Variables and Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Determinants of Geographical Representation on Candidate Lists in Flexible-List Systems: Lessons from the Belgian Case

Put

2015

Politics

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Based on a dataset of candidates from 488 party lists for Belgian lower house elections in the period 1987–2010, this contribution analyses the effects of electoral system-related and party-related determinants on the level of geographical representation on party lists. The results show that decentralised candidate selection methods lead to higher levels of geographical representation on the list in its entirety. With regard to realistic slots, it is found that the percentage of female candidates is negatively associated with geographical representation. Additionally, in districts where the largest city is dominant in terms of population size, it is more difficult for selectorates to realise geographical balance.

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“…Research and activism on diversity and political representation, however, often does not adopt an intersectional approach, instead addressing sex discrimination separately from racial discrimination, and vice versa. Such ''single-axis thinking'' tends to privilege the interests of advantaged subgroups, namely white women and ethnic minority men (Holmsten et al, 2010). Improving the political representation of ethnic minority women thus suffers from what Spelman (1988) calls the ''ampersand problem,'' falling between efforts to promote members of these two categories separately.…”

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confidence: 99%

Intersectional institutions

Krook

Nugent

2016

Party Politics

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The political representation of women and ethnic minorities has received growing attention among political parties around the world. Focusing on the British case, we map data and debates concerning the selection of female and minority candidates, highlighting the simultaneous and interactive role of gender and race in shaping citizens' opportunities to stand for and win election. Utilizing data from the Labour Party, our analysis illustrates the implications of distinct strategies to include members of politically marginalized groups-as well as provides evidence for the potential of ''tandem quotas'' to result in positive outcomes for minority women. Taken together, these findings suggest the need for stronger measures on the part of Labour to encourage the selection of minority candidates; a shift from ''single-axis'' to ''multiple-axis'' thinking when devising strategies to enhance group representation; and rejection of a ''zero-sum'' mentality regarding the nomination of female and minority candidates. KeywordsBritish politics, candidate selection, gender and politics, gender quotas, race and politicsIn recent elections, the political representation of women and black, Asian, and minority ethnic (BAME) communities has received growing attention among the three major British political parties. Both groups won a record number of seats in the House of Commons in 2010, resulting in 22.8% female members of parliament (MPs) and 4.2% BAME MPs. These numbers grew again in 2015 to 29.4% women and 6.3% BAME parliamentarians. However, these figures remain far from proportional to these groups' share of the population, standing at 50.9% and 12.9%, respectively.

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Do Ethnic Parties Exclude Women?

Cited by 26 publications

References 26 publications

Who stands in the way of women? Open vs. closed lists and candidate gender in Estonia

Who stands in the way of women? Open vs. closed lists and candidate gender in Estonia

Determinants of Geographical Representation on Candidate Lists in Flexible-List Systems: Lessons from the Belgian Case

Intersectional institutions

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