Original Article
Confident and cautious candidates: Explaining under-representation of women in Danish municipal politics
MALTE DAHL,
JACOB NYRUP,
Corresponding Author
MALTE DAHL
Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Address for correspondence: Malte Dahl, Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen, Øster Farimagsgade 5, DK-1353, Copenhagen, Denmark. Email: [email protected]
Search for more papers by this authorMALTE DAHL,
JACOB NYRUP,
Corresponding Author
MALTE DAHL
Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Address for correspondence: Malte Dahl, Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen, Øster Farimagsgade 5, DK-1353, Copenhagen, Denmark. Email: [email protected]
Search for more papers by this authorAbstract
Why are women under-represented even in democratic and egalitarian countries? Previous research considers either demand-side or supply-side explanations. We integrate both perspectives in a least-likely case for the under-representation of women, namely the municipal councils in Denmark. The data stems from a candidate choice conjoint experiment, a survey among potential candidates, and data on the actual pool of nominated candidates. On the voter demand-side, we show that there is no pro-male bias in general or in combination with other candidate traits nor that traits evaluated positively by voters appear more frequently among actual male candidates. On the supply-side, we find that women are less likely to be interested in running for political office. This is primarily because women assess their own political qualifications significantly lower than men. The under-supply of female candidates seem to drive the disparity suggesting that we should focus more on supply-side factors to overcome the gender imbalance.
Supporting Information
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| ejpr12396-sup-0001-SuppMat.R106.9 KB | Supplementary Material |
| ejpr12396-sup-0002-SuppMat.docx1,001.9 KB | Supplementary Material |
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| ejpr12396-sup-0005-SuppMat.rds410.5 KB | Supplementary Material |
| ejpr12396-sup-0006-SuppMat.csv5.8 KB | Supplementary Material |
| ejpr12396-sup-0007-SuppMat.csv68 KB | Supplementary Material |
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