Gender bias and women’s political performance

Michela Cella and Elena Manzoni

European Journal of Political Economy, 2023, vol. 77, issue C

Abstract: We model voters’ gender bias as a prejudice on women’s competence coming from a distorted prior. We analyse the effect of this bias in a two-period two-party election model in which voters care about both policy preference and competence. We find that, if voters (wrongly) believe that women are drawn from a distribution of competences with higher weights on lower values, female politicians are less likely to win office but, when elected, they are on average more competent than male elected officials. As a consequence, female incumbents seek re-election more often.

Keywords: Gender bias; Elections; Female politicians (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 D91 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Working Paper: Gender bias and women political performance (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:poleco:v:77:y:2023:i:c:s0176268022001173

DOI: 10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2022.102314

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