The Impact of Women’s Representation on Gender Differences in Party Support

• In Event: Mini-Conference on Politics in Post-industrial Societies I: Women, Gender, Labor Markets and Political Structures

Abstract

From green and Christian Democratic parties, which disproportionately draw women, to populist radical right (PRR) parties, which disproportionately attract men, important gender gaps in party support exist. While previous studies highlight the evolution of gender gaps across party families, with women increasingly supporting left-wing parties, fewer studies investigate variation within party families over time. Relying on a unique and extensive dataset of men/women voter ratios by party family across Europe, we seek to explain this variation. Specifically, our paper asks: How do the descriptive & substantive representation of women affect gender differences in party voter support?
Weeks et al. 2022 and Meguid et al. 2022 have found that some parties introduce programmatic changes &/or increase the descriptive representation of women to target women voters when they perceive feasible electoral gains. We explore whether this strategic use of gender representation affects the subsequent voter gender balance & whether this impact varies across different party families, from those with already women-dominant electorates to those facing a women-voter deficit. We employ original data on gender gaps in party support & on women’s descriptive representation from 28 Western and Eastern European countries from 1985 to 2018. These data are supplemented with manifesto data on substantive representation from the Manifesto Project & an original automated text analysis focused on PRR manifestos.

Authors

• Bonnie M. Meguid, University of Rochester

• Miki Caul Kittilson, Arizona State University

• Hilde Roza Coffe, University of Bath

• Ana Catalano Weeks, University of Bath