Explaining women's political underrepresentation in democracies with high levels of corruption

Abstract

Many democracies with high levels of corruption are also characterized by low levels of women's political representation. Do women candidates in democracies with high levels of corruption face overt voter discrimination? Do gender dynamics that are unique to highly corrupt, democratic contexts influence citizens’ willingness to vote for women? We answer these questions using two separate sets of experiments conducted in Ukraine: two vignette experiments and a conjoint analysis. In line with existing cross-sectional research on Ukraine, our experiments reveal little evidence of direct voter bias against women candidates. Our conjoint analysis also offers novel insights into the preferences of Ukrainian voters, showing that both men and women voters place a great deal of value in anti-corruption platforms, but voters are just as likely to support women and men candidates who say they will fight corruption. Our analysis suggests that women's political underrepresentation in highly corrupt contexts is driven more by barriers that prevent women from winning party nominations and running for office in the first place, rather than overt discrimination at the polls.