Congruence of female and male legislators with the preferences of women and men

Abstract

We leverage the institutional framework in Switzerland to discern the revealed preferences of female and male voters for various legislative proposals. We examine whether female or male legislators’ votes in parliament are more congruent with women’s or men’s revealed preferences for identical legislative proposals. Our analysis of 47,527 matches between legislators and their voters reveals no significant difference in how closely female and male legislators match the preferences of women and men, particularly, when accounting for party affiliations. We conclude that female legislators do not demonstrate higher congruence with women’s preferences than their male counterparts in parliament.