Gender bias and women political performance

Michela Cella and Elena Manzoni

No 414, Working Papers from University of Milano-Bicocca, Department of Economics

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 in which voters care about both ideology and competence. We find that female politicians are less likely to win office but, when elected have higher competence on average. As a consequence, they choose to seek re-election more often. We also show that if parties endogenously select candidates, the effect of gender bias is stronger, in that we observe fewer female candidates and elected politicians, and of higher competence. This holds even when parties are not biased.

Keywords: gender bias; elections; female politicians. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 D91 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31
Date: 2019-06, Revised 2019-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-gen and nep-pol
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Related works:
Journal Article: Gender bias and women’s political performance (2023)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mib:wpaper:414

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