Encountering female politicians

Abstract

The mandated exposure effect on voting represents a mechanism through which affirmative action policies such as quotas can improve prospects for candidates from underrepresented groups. In this paper, we identify an exposure effect by exploiting unintended variation in female candidates’ electoral results in a natural experimental setting. In a 2006 local council election in Korea, the names of candidates nominated by the same party for a ward appeared on the ballot in alphabetical order (based on the Korean alphabet). As a result, in certain districts, some female candidates were arbitrarily elected, based on their name-order advantage. In the subsequent election, those elected females were more likely to be nominated by the party and to win seats again. However, the accidental exposure to female politicians failed to generate positive spillover for other female candidates.