{"title":"When fortune favors women: Do marginal increases in female representation persist?","authors":"","doi":"10.1016/j.jebo.2024.106680","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This study investigates whether incidental electoral successes of women contribute to sustained gender parity in Finland, a leader in gender equality. Utilizing election lotteries used to resolve ties in vote counts, we estimate the causal effect of female representation. Our findings indicate that women’s electoral performance (measured by female seat and vote shares) within parties improves following a lottery win, potentially due to increased exposure. However, these gains are offset by negative spillovers on female candidates from other parties. One reason why this may occur is that voters and parties may perceive sufficient female representation has been achieved, leading to reduced support for female candidates in other parties. Consequently, marginal increases in female representation do not translate to overall gains in women elected. In high but uneven gender parity contexts, such increases may not be self-reinforcing, highlighting the complexity of achieving sustained gender equality in politics.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":48409,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3000,"publicationDate":"2024-08-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268124002762/pdfft?md5=d9f5d271adaf906b66c9b9ec602fb786&pid=1-s2.0-S0167268124002762-main.pdf","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268124002762","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This study investigates whether incidental electoral successes of women contribute to sustained gender parity in Finland, a leader in gender equality. Utilizing election lotteries used to resolve ties in vote counts, we estimate the causal effect of female representation. Our findings indicate that women’s electoral performance (measured by female seat and vote shares) within parties improves following a lottery win, potentially due to increased exposure. However, these gains are offset by negative spillovers on female candidates from other parties. One reason why this may occur is that voters and parties may perceive sufficient female representation has been achieved, leading to reduced support for female candidates in other parties. Consequently, marginal increases in female representation do not translate to overall gains in women elected. In high but uneven gender parity contexts, such increases may not be self-reinforcing, highlighting the complexity of achieving sustained gender equality in politics.
期刊介绍:
The Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization is devoted to theoretical and empirical research concerning economic decision, organization and behavior and to economic change in all its aspects. Its specific purposes are to foster an improved understanding of how human cognitive, computational and informational characteristics influence the working of economic organizations and market economies and how an economy structural features lead to various types of micro and macro behavior, to changing patterns of development and to institutional evolution. Research with these purposes that explore the interrelations of economics with other disciplines such as biology, psychology, law, anthropology, sociology and mathematics is particularly welcome.