Voters’ Perceptions of Women's Representation Within Political Parties

• In Event: Women and Political Parties

Abstract

While parties have a large role in influencing both the descriptive and substantive representation of women, we know much less about how voters perceive parties' efforts to promote female candidates. We have some evidence that, on an aggregate level, voters value equal descriptive representation of men and women in parliaments. Meanwhile, research has shown that left-leaning parties are much more likely than right-leaning parties to nominate female candidates. However, it is unclear if parties are harmed by nominating an unequal number of men and women and whether this effect is stronger for left- than for right-leaning parties which could explain existing nomination patterns. Additionally, many right-leaning parties such as the German Christian Democrats, the British Conservatives and the Polish PiS party have nominated few women while successfully running female lead candidates in elections. Can these parties balance out the potentially negative perception of running few female candidates by having a woman at the top of the ticket?

Using a single vignette survey experiment in five European countries, I show that voters prefer equal descriptive representation of men and women in political parties. However, this effect is strongly mediated by respondent gender: women discount parties that are dominated by male candidates while men only have a strong preference for equal over unequal representation. Additionally, having a female lead candidate can even out low female descriptive representation. These preferences exist for left- and right-leaning voters and both groups prefer female over male lead candidates. These findings have important implications for research on women’s representation: they suggest that parties of all ideological positions would gain from nominating equal numbers of men and women. These effects are substantially large and exist for all subgroups and countries. Meanwhile, nominating a female lead candidate has two effects: parties with female lead candidates are regarded more positively and a woman as the lead candidate can even out the negative perception of having few women among members of parliament.

Author

• Jens Wäckerle, University of Cologne