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