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Gender Quotas and the Crisis of the Mediocre Man: Theory and Evidence from Sweden

Efforts to increase female political representation are often thought to be at odds with meritocracy. This paper develops a theoretical framework and an empirical analysis to examine this idea.

Bibliographische Daten

Besley, Timothy; Folke, Olle; Persson, Torsten; Rickne, Johanna
Herausgeber: Research Institute of Industrial Economics, Sweden
Englisch

Inhaltsbeschreibung

About this publication

  • Publication type: Study
  • Topic: Equal opportunities in corporate policy, gender mainstreaming, and equal opportunities
  • Publication source: International
  • Year of publication: 2013
  • Published in: IFN Working Paper No. 985

We show how the survival concerns of a mediocre male party leadership can create incentives for gender imbalance and more incompetent men in office. The predictions are tested with data on candidates in Swedish municipalities over seven elections (1988-2010), where we use administrative data on labor-market performance to create a measure of the competence of politicians.

We investigate the effects of the "zipper" quota, requiring party groups to alternate male and female names on the ballot, unilaterally implemented by the Social Democratic party in 1993. Far from being at odds with meritocracy, this quota increased the competence of male politicians where it raised the share of female representation the most.

Slide set created by ÖGUT for FEMtech

 

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