Can Gender Quotas in Candidate Lists Empower Women? Evidence from a Regression Discontinuity Design

Event Date: 20 March 2019

Speaker: Manuel Bagues, University of Warwick

Location: Strathclyde Business School, Cathedral Wing, CW406a

Time: 4.15pm

About the speaker:

Manuel is currently a Professor at Warwick University. He worked previously at Aalto University and Universidad Carlos III, and holds a PhD from Universitat Pompeu Fabra. His research interests are primarily in Labour Economics, with a focus on Personnel Economics, Gender Economics, and Economics of Education. He is also interested in the determinants of voting behaviour. 

Abstract: We provide a comprehensive analysis of the short- and medium-term effects of gender quotas in candidate lists using evidence from local elections in Spain. In the context of a closed list system with proportional representation, quotas were introduced in 2007 in municipalities with more than 5,000 inhabitants, and were extended in 2011 to municipalities with more than 3,000 inhabitants. Using a Regression Discontinuity Design, we find that quotas increased the share of women in candidate lists by around 8 p.p. and among council members by 4 p.p. However, within three rounds of elections, we do not observe any significant variation in voting behavior, the quality of politicians, the probability that women reach powerful positions such as party leader or mayor, or the size and composition of public finances. Overall, our analysis suggests that quotas in candidate lists fail to remove the barriers that prevent women from playing an influential role in politics.

Published: 13 March 2019