Emeric Henry discussion of: Women in politics
利用法国2015年省选举中候选人按性别平衡配对且按字母顺序随机排列的独特制度，研究选民对女性候选人的偏见，发现女性在政治中代表性不足。
Though many public policies have been put in place to remedy the situation, ranging from quota to funding requirements, women are still vastly underrepresented in politics. In France, they represent fewer than 25% of candidates at national elections and the share reached 37% in legislative elections. This underrepresentation echoes gender gaps observed in other high skilled jobs. There are certainly many explanations for this gap, ranging from social norms, impact of role models or work–life balance concerns. However, a leading explanation is that voters are biased against women. Empirically, it is notoriously difficult to shed light on this question, and most evidence comes from survey experiments. The current paper uses a unique setting to shed light on this question. During the French Départementales elections of 2015, candidates were required to run as gender-balanced pairs. The system guaranteed that both members of the pair would have identical outcomes, in particular would get the same number of votes. However, they appeared on the ballot in alphabetical order, creating randomness in whether women or men appeared first.