Research Paper 15: Do quotas help women into politics?
The issue of women's representation in politics has recently gained more attention. It is important for at least two reasons. Firstly, women are severely underrepresented on the political stage worldwide. For example, only about 25 percent of legislators are female, even though women make up about half of the population. Therefore, scholars are looking for policies that contribute to a more gender-equitable political process. Second, a growing body of literature shows that female politicians make different decisions than their male counterparts. Therefore, understanding the factors that contribute to different levels of representation of women in the political arena can help to understand the differences in politics and their implications.
This research paper looks at policies to promote women's participation in legislative bodies using a series of changes to electoral law in Poland. The identification strategy builds on the fact that a women's quota was introduced in the 2018 elections in municipalities with a population size of over 20,000. If this were the only change at a population size of 20,000 inhabitants, a regression discontinuity would be a simple strategy to measure the effect of the women's quota. However, since the threshold of 20,000 inhabitants also determines the application of two different electoral systems at local legislative level (municipal councils) in Poland, this approach is not applicable. Below this threshold, a majority voting system applies; above the threshold, a proportional system applies. Due to the multiple differences at the threshold of 20,000 inhabitants, a difference-in-discontinuities approach is applied.
The main results are shown in the following figure. The left graph shows the difference in the discontinuities for the proportion of women on the municipal council, while the right graph refers to the proportion of elected women. It can be observed that although there is a significant discontinuity in terms of the proportion of women on the municipal council, no such effect can be observed for women's chances of being elected.
We have noticed that the women's quota has had a very positive effect on the proportion of women on the municipal council. This is due to two effects: Firstly, the quota increases the amount of available female candidates. While in 2010 there was no difference between the proportion of female candidates in the total candidate pool, in 2018 there is a sharp increase at the population threshold. However, the quota has no influence on the individual probability of being elected as a woman. This suggests that the influence of the women's quota on voting behavior is rather limited. Secondly, we can conclude from a comparison with the effect of the electoral rule that the quota has counteracted the negative 'party bias' associated with proportional representation.
