Are Gender Quotas Enough? Female Candidates and District Competitiveness

• In Event: Gender, Quotas, and Representation

Abstract

To promote gender parity, France was one of the first Western democracies to introduce a strict law providing for fines against political parties that fail to nominate 50 per cent women candidates. Although the percentage of women elected to the French National Assembly has risen considerably since the adoption of gender quotas in the early 2000s, from 10.9 per cent in 1997 to 37.3 per cent in 2022, it is struggling to reach the parity zone. The percentage of women elected has even slightly decreased between the last two legislative elections. In this research, we investigate whether the level of competitiveness of the districts in which French political parties nominate women contributes to their relative under-representation, thereby circumventing the objectives of gender quotas. Using data on all candidates from the six legislative elections held between 1997 and 2022, we test whether women are more likely than men to be nominated in constituencies that they have little or no chance of winning. We use three measures of district competitiveness. Two are “static” (the electoral performance of the candidate and the electoral performance of the presidential candidate of the candidate’s party at the district level) and one is “dynamic” (the stability of electoral support in the district over time). Our analyses show that women remain more likely than men to run in constituencies that their political party is unlikely to win. Yet the competitiveness gap is narrowing. These results highlight that the expected effects of gender quotas on women’s political representation may be undermined if political parties are not committed to allocating strongholds to female candidates.

Authors

• Philippe Chassé, Sciences Po Paris

• Camille Gélix, Sciences Po Paris