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  4. August 2018
  5. Does the Election of a Female Leader Clear the Way for More Women in Politics?

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

  • Thushyanthan Baskaran
  • Zohal Hessami
American Economic Journal: Economic Policy
vol. 10, no. 3, August 2018
(pp. 95-121)
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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.

Citation

Baskaran, Thushyanthan, and Zohal Hessami. 2018. "Does the Election of a Female Leader Clear the Way for More Women in Politics?" American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 10 (3): 95-121. DOI: 10.1257/pol.20170045

Additional Materials

JEL Classification

  • D72 Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
  • J16 Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
  • J71 Labor Discrimination
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