Welcome to the January 2024 edition of the Gender & Politics Research newsletter. It’s been a crazy start to the year, so here are links and abstracts to some great work instead of our usual summaries. This may become a regular format, but time will tell.
Ammassari, Sofia, Duncan McDonnell, and Marco Valbruzzi. "It's about the type of career: The political ambition gender gap among youth wing members." European Journal of Political Research 62, no. 4 (2023): 1054-1077.
“One of the main supply-side explanations for women's underrepresentation in politics is the gender gap in nascent political ambition. While this has been examined in terms of electoral ambition, the aspiration to pursue non-electoral careers within parties has been overlooked. In our study, we therefore investigate whether both types of ambition – electoral and non-electoral – vary among young women and men participating in a key entry point for political careers in Western democracies: party youth wings. To do so, we surveyed almost 2,000 members of six centre-left and centre-right youth wings in Australia, Italy and Spain. We find that while, as expected, women in youth wings display lower levels of electoral ambition, they are almost as likely as men to express non-electoral ambition. Furthermore, and contrary to our expectations, we show that women in centre-right youth wings are no less interested in pursuing electoral and non-electoral political careers than women in centre-left ones. Our study thus provides new insights into the gendered nature of political ambition, highlighting that women's lower interest in electoral office does not necessarily reflect reduced interest in a political career.”
Bhatia, Jasmine, and Steve L. Monroe. “Insecurity and Support for Female Leadership in Conflict States: Evidence from Afghanistan.” British Journal of Political Science, (2023): 1–22.
“While women's political inclusion is central to international conflict resolution efforts, public attitudes in conflict states towards women's political inclusion remain understudied. We expect insecurity to depress support for female political leadership in conflicts where women's political inclusion is violently contested. Citizens wanting security through force prefer male leaders because of stereotypes privileging men's military prowess. However, citizens wanting security through reconciliation also favour men for fear that female leadership would provoke more violence. We assess these expectations with experimental and observational data from the former Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. In the survey experiment, priming respondents to think about insecurity decreases support for female leadership, but only among women. In observational data, insecurity correlates with more polarized attitudes towards women's political representation in some regions and greater support for female leaders in others. Insecurity's impact on public support for female leadership in conflict states may be highly heterogeneous.”
Bracic, Ana, Mackenzie Israel-Trummel, Tyler Johnson, and Kathleen Tipler. "" Because He is Gay": How Race, Gender, and Sexuality Shape Perceptions of Judicial Fairness." Journal of Politics 85, no. 4 (2023).
“How does a judge’s identity affect perceptions of their ability to preside fairly? We theorize that identity categories operate as ideological cues and that the public views judges perceived as ideologically proximate to be fairer, more impartial, and more inspiring of trust in courts broadly. Using a conjoint survey experiment with a diverse national sample, we find support for this theory and show that race, gender, and especially sexuality are used as ideological cues. The effect of identities is conditioned by respondent partisanship. Democratic respondents trust judges with marginalized identities more than judges with dominant identities. Republicans are relatively indifferent to judges’ race or gender but are significantly less trusting of gay judges. We also uncover limited effects when judges preside over a case in which their identity is salient. These results suggest that the public does not seek descriptive representation as such but uses identity categories to achieve ideological congruence.”
Goyal, Tanushree, and Cameron Sells. “Descriptive Representation and Party Building: Evidence from Municipal Governments in Brazil.” American Political Science Review, (2023): 1–16.
“This article highlights a new way in which descriptive representation enhances democracy through inclusive party building. We theorize that parties retain and promote incumbents based on gendered criteria, disproportionately incentivizing women to recruit party members. However, gendered resource inequalities lower women’s access to the patronage required for recruitment. Women respond by recruiting more women members, as it lowers recruitment costs, is role-congruent, and eases credit claiming. Using rich administrative data on party membership from 2004 to 2020 and a regression discontinuity design in Brazil, we find that, despite resource disparities, women mayors recruit new members at similar rates as men but reduce the gender gap in party membership. As expected, women are more likely to be promoted in constituencies where they most lower the gender gap in party membership. We also find that women’s increased membership improves party resilience. Our findings suggest that descriptive representation strengthens party building by including underrepresented citizens.”
Huidobro, Alba, and Albert Falcó-Gimeno. "Women Who Win but Do Not Rule: The Effect of Gender in the Formation of Governments." The Journal of Politics 85, no. 4 (2023): 1562-1568.
“Why are women strongly underrepresented in top political positions? We analyze the effect of party leaders’ gender on their ability to capitalize on political power during negotiations to form a new government after elections. We leverage the as-if random assignment of a bargaining advantage in close local elections in Spain through a regression discontinuity design and find that women are about 25 percentage points less likely than men to secure the mayor’s position when they win elections by a narrow margin, even if their parties manage to join the governing coalition anyway. This article contributes to the understanding of the role of personal characteristics in the political process and has far-reaching implications for gender equality and the quality of democratic representation.”
Kjelsrud, Anders, and Andreas Kotsadam. "Female Employment and Voter Turnout: Evidence from India." The Journal of Politics 85, no. 4 (2023): 1569-1574.
“Previous research on the effects of employment on voter turnout yields mixed results. Combining data from the largest workfare program in the world with data from over 50,000 Indian polling stations, we show that increased employment substantially increases female turnout. Mechanism tests suggest the results are driven by employment rather than income and program satisfaction. In particular, we find increases in the number of friends, discussions of politics with more people, and increased knowledge of politics. We also find effects on nonelectoral political participation, and we argue that the effects we identify are driven by autonomous political participation.”