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

2018/07/26 by Thushyanthan Baskaran, Zohal Hessami · 2 citations
Social Sciences · Business, Management and Accounting · #Gender Politics and Representation #Electoral Systems and Political Participation #Political Influence and Corporate Strategies

paper · pdf · doi:10.1257/pol.20170045

openalex publication_date 2018/07/26 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/11

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. (JEL D72, J16, J71)

Citations

• Gender Quotas and the Crisis of the Mediocre Man: Theory and Evidence from Sweden
• Robust Nonparametric Confidence Intervals for Regression-Discontinuity Designs
• Entering the Arena? Gender and the Decision to Run for Office
• Women as Policy Makers: Evidence from a Randomized Policy Experiment in India

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