Gender Differences in Policy Preferences of Legislators: Evidence from China’s National Legislature

Abstract Do female legislators have different policy preferences than male legislators? Despite a large body of literature from liberal democracies and recent studies of electoral authoritarian regimes, this topic has received little attention in the context of single-party regimes. Based on quasi-experimental methods and regression models, we analyze original data from 38,383 proposals introduced during China’s 12th National People’s Congress and test the effect of gender on policies concerning conventionally selected feminine issues and “political stance,” issues that are unique to single-party regimes. The analysis confirms the effect of gender on policy preference across several feminine issues. However, the effect of gender is null on issues concerning political stance. Our findings suggest that while single-party regimes allow gender differences to emerge among legislators on issues that are not politically important, they tend to discourage such differences on politically prominent issues. This study advances the literature on both gender politics and authoritarian politics.