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

Thushyanthan Baskaran and Zohal Hessami

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 2018, vol. 10, issue 3, 95-121

Abstract: 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-codes: D72 J16 J71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
Note: DOI: 10.1257/pol.20170045
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (65)

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Working Paper: Does the election of a female leader clear the way for more women in politics? (2017)
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