eprintid: 10205887
rev_number: 6
eprint_status: archive
userid: 699
dir: disk0/10/20/58/87
datestamp: 2025-03-11 09:28:38
lastmod: 2025-03-11 09:28:38
status_changed: 2025-03-11 09:28:38
type: article
metadata_visibility: show
sword_depositor: 699
creators_name: Gatto, Malu AC
creators_name: Radojevic, Marco
title: Choosing Women: Party elites’ preferences in the candidate selection process
ispublished: pub
divisions: UCL
divisions: B03
divisions: C03
divisions: F27
keywords: candidate selection, women and politics, political recruitment
political representation, party leaders
note: Copyright © The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.
abstract: Across the world, women continue to be underrepresented in parliaments. As gatekeepers to candidate lists, party leaders are in a pivotal position to promote gender balance. But do party elites consider women’s underrepresentation when deciding who to nominate? Leveraging a large-scale conjoint experiment with 1,389 party elites in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland, we find that the more underrepresented women are in candidate lists, the better the chances of women aspirants. Awareness of women’s underrepresentation influences selectors for whom promoting gender equality may be a less crystallized priority: centrists and men. Women’s underrepresentation also reinforces preferences for women aspirants among those for whom gender equality may be a core value (left-wing and women selectors) but does not affect those for whom opposing gender equality may bring electoral advantages (right-wing party elites). Our findings shed light on the potential role that signalling underrepresentation may have on party elites’ selection of women aspirants.
date: 2025
date_type: published
publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
official_url: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123424000723
oa_status: green
full_text_type: pub
language: eng
primo: open
primo_central: open_green
verified: verified_manual
elements_id: 2368537
doi: 10.1017/S0007123424000723
lyricists_name: Gatto, Maria Luiza
lyricists_id: MLABE94
actors_name: Gatto, Maria Luiza
actors_id: MLABE94
actors_role: owner
full_text_status: public
publication: British Journal of Political Science
volume: 55
article_number: e36
issn: 0007-1234
citation:        Gatto, Malu AC;    Radojevic, Marco;      (2025)    Choosing Women: Party elites’ preferences in the candidate selection process.                   British Journal of Political Science , 55     , Article e36.  10.1017/S0007123424000723 <https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123424000723>.       Green open access   
 
document_url: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10205887/1/choosing-women-party-elites-preferences-in-the-candidate-selection-process.pdf