Perceptions about the Nomination Process among Women and Men Candidates

• In Event: How to Get More Women in Politics: Examining the Political Systems and Processes

Abstract

Before elections take place, political parties select the candidates that will run on their behalf. Throughout this process, and especially in List-PR systems, most parties aim to compile a diverse list, e.g. in terms of gender, with potential candidates facing strong (intra)party competition from other candidates. Yet, we know surprisingly little about how women and men candidates perceive this nomination process and to what extent they believe their chances to be selected vary depending on their gender. Therefore, we ask: (1) To what extent do women and men candidates believe that (a) women have an overall advantage during the nomination process and (b) their own gender (being a woman or being a man, for respectively women and men candidates) is a disadvantage during the nomination process? and (2) To what extent do these perceptions differ depending on the descriptive representation of women in their parties?

Considering the importance of women’s equal descriptive representation, both in symbolic and substantive terms, and the backlash among some men against (increased) gender equality, these are timely questions to answer. Given the growing aim of many political parties to achieve a more gender equal list – mostly by increasing women’s descriptive representation – women may be more likely to believe that being a woman, and thus their own gender, is an advantage, while men may be expected to believe that their own gender is a disadvantage. This may particularly hold in parties with a high representation of women, where men may feel greater intraparty competition with women candidates compared with parties with a lower level of women’s representation.

To test these expectations, we rely on the 2019 Finnish Comparative Candidate Survey combined with district-level data on women’s descriptive representation within Finnish parties. In brief, our multivariate analyses show that women are more likely than men to believe that (a) women have an overall advantage, and that (b) their own gender is an advantage during the nomination process. The proportion of women candidates in a party does not affect men or women candidates’ perceptions about their own gender being disadvantaged, but it does relate to women’s perceptions of women having an overall advantage. That is, the more women nominated by their party, the less women believe that women have an overall advantage. Gender parity is thus negatively linked to perceptions of women’s advantage, at least among women candidates. Women’s representation on their party’s list does not matter for men’s perceptions about women having an overall advantage. Overall, our findings suggest that men candidates do not feel threatened by women overall as candidates, regardless of how many women are currently on the party list.

Authors

• Hilde Roza Coffe, University of Bath

• Catherine Bolzendahl, Oregon State University

• Asa von Schoultz, University of Helsinki