Electoral Competition, Voter Bias, and Women in Politics
研究了选民对女性的偏见如何影响议会选举中女性候选人的比例和得票率，发现偏见越强、性别收入差距越大，女性候选人越少、得票越低，且政党会策略性地将男性候选人派往竞争激烈的选区，削弱性别配额的效果。
Abstract We quantify the implications of voter bias and electoral competition for politicians’ gender composition. Unfavorable voters’ attitudes toward women and local gender earnings gap correlate negatively with the share of female candidates in Parliamentary elections. Using within-candidate variation across the different polling stations of an electoral district in a given election year, we find that female candidates obtain fewer votes in municipalities with higher gender earnings gaps. We show theoretically that when voters are biased against women, parties facing gender quotas select male candidates in the most contestable districts. We find empirical support for such a strategic party response to voter gender bias. Simulating our calibrated model confirms that competition significantly hinders the effectiveness of gender quotas.