Gender differences in re-contesting decisions: New evidence from French municipal elections
利用法国地方选举中男女候选人竞争激烈的选情，研究发现女性在落选后比男性更不愿再次参选，但获胜后与男性同样或更可能连任，且差异不能用个人特征或预期回报解释，而可能与竞争态度或政党行为有关。
This paper studies differences across genders in the re-contesting decisions of politicians following electoral wins or defeats. Using close races in mixed-gender French local elections, we show that women are less likely to persist in competition when they lose compared to male runners-up, but are equally or more prone than male winners to re-contest when they win. Differences in observable characteristics or in the expected electoral returns of running again cannot fully account for these gender gaps in persistence. In contrast, evidence suggests that results are driven by behavioural explanations such as cross-gender differences in candidates’ attitudes toward competition, or by political parties behaving differently toward female and male candidates for a given electoral outcome. Additionally, we provide evidence that a woman’s victory encourages former female challengers to re-contest but does not trigger the entry of new female candidates.