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

SangEun Kim and Kristin Michelitch

Journal of Experimental Political Science, 2022, vol. 9, issue 3, 326-338

Abstract: This study examines whether politicians exhibit gender bias in responsiveness to constituents’ requests for public service delivery improvements in Uganda. We leverage an in-person survey experiment conducted with 333 subnational politicians, of which one-third are elected to women’s reserved seats. Politicians hear two constituents request improvements in staff absenteeism in their local school and health clinic and must decide how to allocate a fixed (hypothetical) budget between the two improvements. The voices of the citizens are randomly assigned to be (1) male-school, female-health or (2) female-school, male-health. We find no evidence of gender bias toward men versus women, or toward same-gender constituents. This study expands on the mixed results of prior studies examining gender bias in politician responsiveness (typically over email) by adding a critical new case: a low-income context with women’s reserved seats.

Date: 2022
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