Whilst the under-representation of women in politics is a widely recognised fact, the reasons for this under-representation are still not fully understood and give rise to much debate. Among the possible explanations, the hypothesis that voters discriminate against women is frequently put forward but rarely substantiated. This study sets out to test this hypothesis in the case of France. To this end, we draw on a unique natural experiment that took place in France in March 2015 during the departmental elections. For the first time, candidates were not required to stand alone but in pairs that were necessarily gender-balanced, comprising one man and one woman. The law also stipulated that the order in which candidates appeared on the ballot paper must be based on alphabetical order, which meant that half of the pairs had a woman in the first position and vice versa. This historic change to the electoral process may have led some voters to believe that the candidate listed first on the ballot paper had greater authority than the person listed second, and thus to pay them more attention. This reform provides an ideal analytical framework for the evaluation of gender discrimination and the analysis of its determinants: by comparing the votes received by pairs with a woman in first and second position, and given that the gender of the first candidate is random, we are able to precisely identify the existence of discrimination by voters against women.
Ultimately, we identify substantial discrimination against female candidates affiliated with right-wing parties, which affected the election result. We also show that voters’ gender biases depend not only on the amount of information available on the ballot papers, but also on the level of discrimination in the local labour market.
Gender discrimination and local elections
This paper seeks to test the hypothesis that voters discriminate against women in French elections.
Reference IPP Policy Brief No. 51
Presentation
Key Results
- Women are under-represented in politics, particularly at local level: 42 per cent of MPs are women, whilst only 16 per cent of mayors are women.
- The 2015 departmental elections introduced gender parity by requiring candidates to stand in mixed pairs: each pair consists of one man and one woman. The law also stipulates that the order in which candidates appear on the ballot paper must be alphabetical: in half of the cases, a man is listed first, and vice versa.
- Some voters may have focused their attention solely on the name of the first candidate. However, as the order in which candidates appear is random and is not linked to their roles once elected, the gender of the first candidate should not affect the vote. If pairs in which a woman is listed first receive fewer votes than others, this indicates the existence of gender discrimination on the part of voters.
- By analysing the differences in electoral performance between pairs with a woman or a man in the lead position, we show that only right-wing pairs with a woman in the lead position were discriminated against by their voters: on average, they lost 1.5 percentage points of the vote in the first round (equivalent to around 5 per cent of the average share received by a right-wing ticket), which is not the case for other political groups.
- The resulting loss of votes altered the outcome of the election: the affected pairs saw their probability of reaching the second round or winning the election decrease by 5 per cent.
Jean-Benoît Eyméoud
Paul Vertier