Politics | Gender Lab

Political Selection and Gender Gaps in Policy Preferences

Ximena Caló, Paola Profeta, Riccardo Puglisi, Simona Scabrosetti

Women and men differ systematically in their policy preferences, yet political elites often do not. This raises a central question for theories of representation: does descriptive representation translate into substantive differences in policy preferences or are these differences filtered out by political selection? Using harmonized cross-national data from the European Social Survey and the Comparative Candidate Survey across 21 European countries (2002–2021), we compare gender gaps in policy preferences among voters, candidates, and elected officials. Across a wide range of economic and policy domains, gender gaps are large among voters, substantially smaller among candidates, and vanish among elected officials. This convergence is asymmetric: women’s preferences among political elites move toward those of men. Gender gaps are already small among first-time candidates and do not systematically vary with political experience or party tenure, consistent with political selection rather than socialization. The domain of same-sex rights constitutes a clear exception. On this identity-linked issue, gender gaps persist across political roles, with female politicians maintaining consistently progressive positions. Overall, political selection strongly limits the extent to which descriptive representation translates into substantive policy differences.

The Political Aftershocks of Natural Disasters: Gender Penalties in Post-Crisis Elections

Ximena Caló

Do natural disasters systematically disadvantage female politicians? Using a candidate-level panel of Chilean municipal elections (2004-2021) merged with seismic intensity measures from the 2010 Maule earthquake, I find that female candidates in high-exposure communes experienced an 8.9 percentage point decline in within-list vote share relative to male candidates, a penalty that also eroded their seat-winning margins. The effect emerged immediately and persisted for nearly a decade. The penalty extends to challengers with no governing record and is not explained by changes in party nomination strategies. A positive economic shock, the mid-2000s copper boom, produced no comparable gender gap, suggestive of crisis-specific stereotype activation rather than symmetric performance-based accountability. These findings foreground that climate-related disasters may threaten progress toward gender parity in elected office.

Gender Quotas in Municipal Executives: Reallocating Public Spending in Italy

Flavia Cavallini, Alice Dominici, Olivia Masi

This study investigates the effect of increasing female representation in executive positions within local governments on municipal expenditures and the provision of public social services. We leverage a 2014 reform in Italy that mandated 40% gender quotas in the executive councils of municipalities with more than 3000 inhabitants. Introducing quotas for executives represents a novel and interesting setting, as these figures might have more influence over administration and budgeting than other council members. To isolate the impact of gender quotas from other policies active at the same population cutoff, we employ a difference-in-discontinuities approach. We document that the policy effectively increases female representation in local governments, aligning with its objectives. Our findings reveal that the increase in female executives shifts the composition of expenditures in favor of schools, with the budget share allocated to preschools and schools rising by 23% and 10%, respectively. This indicates that including women in executive roles can influence the allocation of municipal resources.

Gender differences in political budget cycles

Carmela Accettura, Paola Profeta

Men and women differ in political behaviour and leadership style. Does the gender of politicians affect the engagement in political budget cycles? We provide empirical evidence on gender differences in political budget cycles by exploiting mixed-gender races among mayoral candidates in Italian municipalities in the period 2002-2017. Using a Regression Discontinuity Design, we show that male mayors who are elected by a small margin against a female opponent are more likely to engage in strategic spending at pre-electoral and electoral years, as compared to female mayors. That is particularly true for highly visible policies that yield immediate benefits, such as roads construction and maintenance, transportation, green areas and waste disposal. We also find that, as elections approach, male incumbents raise deficit levels more than their female colleagues do.

Family culture and childcare

Francesca Carta, Lorenzo De Masi, Paola Profeta

Who cares about childcare? Covid-19 and gender differences in local public spending

Alda Marchese, Paola Profeta, Giulia Savio

International Tax and Public (2025)

The Covid-19 pandemic increased the salience of childcare and focused attention on the allocation of public funds for it. Focusing on Italy, one of the first countries severely impacted by the Covid-19 crisis, we analyze how male and female politicians responded to the Covid-19 pandemic in the allocation of funds to childcare. To assess causality, we analyze close mixed-gender races in Italian local elections in small municipalities without gender quotas from 2016 to 2023. Our findings show that pre Covid-19 female mayors spent more on childcare than male mayors. However, during the pandemic, the gender gap closed, as male mayors increased spending, a trend that continued in the post pandemic period.

Beyond the Party Push: Gender Differences in Voters’ Persuasion

Giulia Savio

European Journal of Political Economy (2024)

Despite ongoing efforts to bridge gender disparities, women continue to be underrepresented in political spheres. This paper proposes a novel explanation for the female disadvantage in electoral success, focusing on politicians’ capacity to broaden their electoral base and appeal to voters from opposing parties. Drawing on Swiss elections, this paper leverages various aspects of the electoral system. In Switzerland, the electoral process is characterized by open lists, allowing voters to select candidates within their preferred party, and cross-voting, enabling them to choose candidates from other party lists. Additionally, electoral registers provide data on the number of preference votes garnered by each candidate, categorized by the voter’s preferred party. The analysis reveals that individual preference votes play a pivotal role in driving gender disparities in candidates’ electoral achievements. While the gender gap in preferences expressed by supporters of a particular party is less robust, male politicians outperform their female counterparts significantly in collecting preference votes through cross-voting. This implies that male politicians are more skilled at persuading voters from rival parties. These findings, motivated by various underlying mechanisms, carry considerable policy implications concerning the approach to addressing gender inequalities in politics.

Electoral Rules, Women's Representation and the Quality of Politicians

Paola Profeta, Eleanor F. Woodhouse

Comparative Political Studies (2022)

Proportional electoral rules are associated with more substantial women’s representation than majoritarian ones. To provide causal evidence that electoral rules affect women’s representation and the qualification of politicians, we collect panel data on the universe of Italian politicians from all levels of government over the period 1987–2013 and analyse an Italian reform which, in 2005, changed the electoral rule for national elections from (mostly) majoritarian to proportional, but did not affect subnational level elections. We f indthat this reform increased the number of womenelected by5%,whilenot decreasing the overall qualification levels of politicians, measured by the level of education and political experience. We provide evidence that the highest qualification women are not elected and that the overall qualification of elected politicians could have increased (rather than remain constant) if the best women candidates had been elected.

Women and Public Finance

Alessandra Casarico, Salvatore Lattanzio, Paola Profeta

European Journal of Political Economy (2022)

Does the gender of the mayor affect the size and composition of public expenditures and revenues? Using a sharp regression discontinuity design in close mixed gender races for the election of mayors in Italian municipalities in the period 2000–2015, we find no significant differences in policies implemented by male and female mayors. We explore whether the result masks heterogeneity by gender composition of the local government and by electoral rules according to which a mayor is elected. We find some evidence that female mayors devote a larger share of spending to the environment when there are more women in the municipal council, whereas they reduce the amount of resources going to social spending under the run-off relative to the single round system.