Female Representation but Male Rule? Party Competition and the Political Glass Ceiling

Abstract

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Gender quotas and the quality of politicians

“…In this paper we study the same policy experiment, but focus on the quality of politicians rather than on the number of elected women. Folke and Rickne (2012) suggest that in contexts where political competition is weak, gender quotas may reduce barriers for women to get access to higher political offices. Gender quotas may also have an impact on local policies.…”

“…26 Such choice of the dependent variable is motivated by the potential correlation of labor market ability and skills in the political arena (Galasso and Nannicini, 2011). 27 A higher proportion of politicians whose previous occupation is skill-intensive would be interpreted as an indicator of a higher quality of the political body.…”

“…The impact of this gender quotas' reform on turnout is examined by De Paola et al (2012), who adopt our identification strategy 25. The full list of occupations included in this category is in the Appendix,Table A.3.26 Some papers analyze the presence of professional groups in politics as a potential determinant of the quality of governance: for instance, Braendle and Stutzer (2010) focus on the presence of public servants in German Laender Parliaments; Gehlbach et al (2010) look at businessmen;Rosenson (2006) at lawyers 27. The importance of the professional background for politicians' quality and their performance is confirmed byDreher et al (2009), who show that the professional background of a head of government…”

Future electoral impacts of having a female mayor

“…Following the setup developed by Gilardi (2015), Folke and Rickne (2012), and Krook and Schwindt-Bayer (2013), the reasons for the lack of female participation in politics can be grouped into two main factors: supply factors, which are often associated with decisions made by women; demand factors, which are often associated with decisions made by parties and/or the electorate.…”

“…Particularly in the political arena, there is a significant lack of women in legislative and executive elected offices (BALTRUNAITE et al, 2014;BEAMAN et al, 2009;DE PAOLA et al, 2010;LAWLESS, 2004). The literature points to the influence of supply factors, such as role models (GILARDI, 2015), of demand factors, such as party recruitment (FOLKE and RICKNE, 2012), and of electoral rules, which could be genderbiased (KROOK and SCHWINDT-BAYER, 2013), as the main reasons for the low representation of women in politics.…”