Erik Hornung discussion of: Women in politics

Abstract

In 2021, women held 31.6% of seats in parliaments across OECD countries (OECD, 2021). A vast number of initiatives aim to achieve gender parity in politics. Changing electoral rules to induce gender equality might, however, come with unintended and unpredictable consequences. This paper exploits a change in electoral rules to study gender discrimination as an unintended outcome of gender parity legislation. In 2013, the electoral code for the election of departmental councils in France was amended to state that voters elect two members of the opposite sex in a tandem. As a result, these assemblies became gender-balanced by design. Because their names needed to be arranged in alphabetical order, some pairs listed female candidates first (treatment group) whereas others listed male candidates first (control group). The authors of this paper argue that voters did not understand the electoral rules well enough and assumed that the first listed candidate was the main candidate. This had consequences for the electoral results if the pair listing a female candidate first was nominated by a right-wing party, whereas the ordering did not affect results for other parties. Female-first right-wing pairs received 1.5% fewer votes.