Barriers to Women’s Political Ascent: The Roles of Parties and Voters

This paper uses a regression discontinuity approach and data from Australian state and territory elections to investigate whether party or voter preferences contribute to the electoral disadvantage faced by female incumbents. We find that while parties are equally likely to nominate male and female incumbents to recontest elections, female incumbents are less likely to win despite similar qualifications. As incumbency is critical for advancing to leadership positions, the higher rate at which younger, less experienced challengers replace female incumbents--compared to male incumbents-- suggests that voter bias against older women hinders female politicians from ascending to leadership positions.

Quynh Do is a Research Fellow at Curtin University Node of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the Elimination of Violence Against Women (CEVAW). She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Monash University. Her primary areas of research are Behavioural and Experimental Economics, Political Economics, Development Economics, Health Economics and Applied Econometrics, and she has published her work in refereed international journals such as Social Science and Medicine. Her recent research examines the role of voters and parties in the underrepresentation of female political leaders and the discrimination against governing-party incumbents in Australian state-level politics.