The challenge
It was unclear whether the under-representation of women in politics reflects intrinsic gender biases of voters or the institutions and rules of elections.
The case
Law 215/2012 introduced double preference voting conditioned on gender in Italian municipal council elections: voters can express two preferences instead of one if they vote for candidates of different gender. It also requires that neither gender make up more than two thirds of candidates on a list. The law applies to municipalities with more than 5,000 residents and was in force for the first time in the 2013 municipal elections. Using a regression discontinuity design around the 5,000-resident threshold, Audinga Baltrunaite, Alessandra Casarico, Paola Profeta and Giulia Savio found that the policy raised the share of female councillors by 18 percentage points, an effect mainly driven by more preference votes cast for female candidates. They also found evidence of changes in expenditure allocation in municipalities subject to the policy and changes in how voters cast preferences in higher-level elections.
Why it worked
The authors say their findings are consistent with the idea that the under-representation of women in politics 'is not purely an artifact of intrinsic gender biases of voters, but it is at least in part institution-driven, and thus modifiable'.
Sources
- Baltrunaite, A., Casarico, A., Profeta, P., & Savio, G. (2019). Let the voters choose women. Journal of Public Economics, 180, 104085.
- Baltrunaite, A., Casarico, A., Profeta, P., & Savio, G. (January 2020 manuscript). Let the voters choose women. University of Turin repository.
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