Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T04:33:17.507Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Women Want an Answer! Field Experiments on Elected Officials and Gender Bias

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 August 2020

Gabriele Magni  and
Zoila Ponce de Leon
Gabriele Magni
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science and International Relations, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Zoila Ponce de Leon*
Affiliation:
Politics Department, Washington and Lee University, Lexington, VA, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: zponcedeleon@wlu.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Are elected officials more responsive to men than women inquiring about access to government services? Women face discrimination in many realms of politics, but evidence is limited on whether such discrimination extends to interactions between women and elected officials. In recent years, several field experiments have examined public officials’ responsiveness. The majority focused on racial bias in the USA, while the few experiments outside the USA were usually single-country studies. We explore gender bias with the first large-scale audit experiment in five countries in Europe (France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, and Netherlands) and six in Latin America (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Uruguay). A citizen alias whose gender is randomized contacts members of parliament about unemployment benefits or healthcare services. The results are surprising. Legislators respond significantly more to women (+3% points), especially in Europe (+4.3% points). In Europe, female legislators in particular reply substantially more to women (+8.4% points).

Keywords

gender biaslegislators’ responsivenessfiled experimentEuropeLatin America
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Experimental Political Science , Volume 8 , Issue 3 , Winter 2021 , pp. 273 - 284
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Experimental Research Section of the American Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

The authors would like to thank Cecilia Martinez-Garrardo and Anna Bassi for their constant support during the initial stages of this project. They are also grateful to Luke Chanarin and Bilyana Petrova for reading different versions of the manuscript, as well as the participants in the European Political Science Association Meeting in Milan, Italy, and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. Finally, they would like to thank Beatriz Rey and Jelle Koedam for their help with translation. The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest. They have no affiliations with or involvement in any organization or entity with any financial or non-financial interest in the subject matter or materials discussed in this manuscript. The data, code, and any additional materials required to replicate all analyses in this article are available at the Journal of Experimental Political Science Dataverse within the Harvard Dataverse Network, at: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/VVXJBJ under: Magni and Ponce de Leon, 2020.

References

Anzia, S. F. and Berry, C. R. 2011. The Jackie (and Jill) Robinson Effect: Why Do Congresswomen Outperform Congressmen? American Journal of Political Science 55(3): 478–493.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bratton, K. A. 2005. Critical Mass Theory Revisited: The Behavior and Success of Token Women in State Legislatures. Politics & Gender 1(1): 97–125.Google Scholar
Broockman, D. E. 2013. Black Politicians Are More Intrinsically Motivated to Advance Blacks’ Interests: A Field Experiment Manipulating Political Incentives. American Journal of Political Science 57: 521–536.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burden, B. C. 2007. Personal Roots of Representation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Butler, D. M. and Crabtree, C. 2017. Moving Beyond Measurement: Adapting Audit Studies to Test Bias-Reducing Interventions. Journal of Experimental Political Science 4(1): 57–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Butler, D. M., De Vries, C. E. and Solaz, H. 2019. Studying Policy Diffusion at the Individual Level: Experiments on Nationalistic Biases in Information Seeking. Research & Politics 6(4): 2053168019891619.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Butler, D. M. 2014. Representing the Advantaged: How Politicians Reinforce Inequality. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Butler, D. M. and Broockman, D. E. 2011. Do Politicians Racially Discriminate against Constituents? A Field Experiment on State Legislators. American Journal of Political Science 55(3): 463–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Canon, D. T. 1999. Race, redistricting, and representation: The unintended consequences of black majority districts. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carnes, N. and Holbein, J. 2019. Do Public Officials Exhibit Social Class Biases When They Handle Casework? Evidence from Multiple Correspondence Experiments. PloS one 14(3). doi: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0214244.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Carroll, S. J. 2001. Representing Women: Women State Legislators as Agents of Policy-Related Change. The Impact of Women in Public Office, 1: 3–21.Google Scholar
Costa, M. and Schaffner, B. F. 2018. How Gender Conditions the Way Citizens Evaluate and Engage with Their Representatives. Political Research Quarterly 71(1): 46–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Costa, M. 2017. How Responsive are Political Elites? A Meta-Analysis of Experiments on Public Officials. Journal of Experimental Political Science 4(3): 241–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crowder-Meyer, M. 2013. Gendered Recruitment Without Trying: How Local Party Recruiters Affect Women’s Representation. Politics & Gender 9(4): 390–413.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Vries, C., Dinas, E. and Solaz, H. n.d. You Have Got Mail! How Intrinsic and Extrinsic Shape Constituency Service in the European Parliament. IHS Political Science Series No. 140, May 2016. [Policy Paper]Google Scholar
Desposato, S. and Norrander, B. 2009. The Gender Gap in Latin America: Contextual and Individual Influences on Gender and Political Participation. British Journal of Political Science 39(1): 141–162.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dhima, K. 2018. Elite Gender Discrimination? Evidence from a Field Experiment. Working paper, Texas A&M University.Google Scholar
Diaz, M. M. 2005. Representing Women? Female Legislators in West European Parliaments. Colchester, UK: ECPR Press.Google Scholar
Distelhorst, G. and Hou, Y. 2014. Ingroup Bias in Official Behavior: A National Field Experiment in China. Quarterly Journal of Political Science 9(2): 203–230.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Druckman, JN, Leeper, TJ and Mullinix, KJ (2014) The Experimental Study of Legislative Behaviour. In The Oxford Handbook of Legislative Studies, eds. Shane, M., Saalfeld, T. and Strøm, K. Oxford: Oxford University Press 194–210.Google Scholar
Einstein, K. L. and Glick, D. M. 2017. Does Race Affect Access to Government Services? An Experiment Exploring Street-Level Bureaucrats and Access to Public Housing. American Journal of Political Science 61(1): 100–116.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fox, R. L. and Lawless, J. L. 2010. If Only They’d Ask: Gender, Recruitment, and Political Ambition. The Journal of Politics 72(2): 310–326.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Franceschet, S. and Piscopo, J. M. 2008. Gender Quotas and Women’s Substantive Representation: Lessons from Argentina. Politics & Gender 4(3): 393–425.Google Scholar
Fulton, S. A. 2012. Running Backwards and in High Heels: The Gendered Quality Gap and Incumbent Electoral Success. Political Research Quarterly 65(2): 303–314.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Golder, S. N., Crabtree, C. and Dhima, K. 2019. Legislative Representation and Gender (bias). Political Science 71(1): 1–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greene, Z. and O’Brien, D. Z. 2016. Diverse Parties, Diverse Agendas? Female Politicians and the Parliamentary Party’s Role in Platform Formation. European Journal of Political Research 55(3): 435–453.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grose, C. R. 2015. Field Experiments on Elected and Public Officials: Ethical Obligations and Requirements. In Ethics and Experiments, ed. Desposato, S. New York, NY: Routledge, 241–252.Google Scholar
Grose, C. R. 2014. Field Experimental Work on Political Institutions. Annual Review of Political Science 17: 355–370.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grose, C. R. 2011. Congress in Black and White: Race and Representation in Washington and at Home. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Habel, P. and Birch, S. 2019. A Field Experiment on the Effects of Ethnicity and Socioeconomic Status on the Quality of Representation. Legislative Studies Quarterly 44(3): 389–420.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Homola, J. 2019. Are Parties Equally Responsive to Women and Men? British Journal of Political Science 49(3): 957–975.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Htun, M. 2016. Inclusion without Representation in Latin America: Gender Quotas and Ethnic Reservations. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kalla, J., Rosenbluth, F. and Teele, D. L. 2017. Are You My Mentor? A Field Experiment on Gender, Ethnicity, and Political Self-Starters. The Journal of Politics 80(1): 337–341.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lawless, J. L. and Fox, R. L. 2010. It Still Takes a Candidate: Why Women Don’t Run for Office. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Magni, G. and Ponce de Leon, Z. 2020. Replication Data for: Women Want an Answer! Field Experiments on Elected Officials and Gender Bias. Harvard Dataverse, V1. doi: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/VVXJBJ.Google Scholar
McClendon, G. 2016. Race and Responsiveness: A Field Experiment with South African Politicians. 2016. The Journal of Experimental Political Science 3(1): 60–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McClendon, G. 2012. Ethics of Using Public Officials as Field Experiment Subjects. The Experimental Political Scientist 3(1): 13–20.Google Scholar
Mendez, M. S. and Grose, C. R. 2018. Doubling Down: Inequality in Responsiveness and the Policy Preferences of Elected Officials. Legislative Studies Quarterly 43(3): 457–491.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mendez, M. S. n.d. Who Represents the Interests of Undocumented Immigrants? A Study of State Legislators. Working paper. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2592754Google Scholar
Naurin, E. and Öhberg, P. 2019. Ethics in Elite Experiments: A Perspective of Officials and Voters. British Journal of Political Science X: 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123418000583Google Scholar
O’Brien, D. Z. and Piscopo, J. M. 2019. The Impact of Women in Parliament. In The Palgrave Handbook of Women’s Political Rights, eds. Susan, F., Mona Lena, K. and Netina, T. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 53–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pfaff, S., Crabtree, C., Kern, H. L. and Holbein, J. B. 2018. Does religious bias shape access to public services? A large-scale audit experiment among street-level bureaucrats.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pitkin, H. F. 1967. The Concept of Representation. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rhinehart, S. 2020. Mentoring the Next Generation of Women Candidates: A Field Experiment of State Legislators. American Politics Research. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X20906459.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosenfeld, M. J. 2017. Moving a Mountain: The Extraordinary Trajectory of Same-Sex Marriage Approval in the United States. Socius 3: 1–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schwindt-Bayer, L. A. ed. 2018. Gender and Representation in Latin America. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schwindt-Bayer, L. A. 2010. Political Power and Women’s Representation in Latin America. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schwindt-Bayer, L. A. 2006. Still Supermadres? Gender and the Policy Priorities of Latin American Legislators. American Journal of Political Science 50(3): 570–585.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Swers, M. L. 2002. The Difference Women Make: The Policy Impact of Women in Congress. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Teele, D. L., Kalla, J. and Rosenbluth, F. 2018. The Ties that Double Bind: Social Roles and Women’s Underrepresentation in Politics. American Political Science Review 112(3): 525–541.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomsen, D. M. and Sanders, B. K. 2019. Gender Differences in Legislator Responsiveness. Perspectives on Politics, 1–14. doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592719003414.Google Scholar
Vega, A. and Firestone, J. M. 1995. The Effects of Gender on Congressional Behavior and the Substantive Representation of Women. Legislative Studies Quarterly 20(2): 213–222.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
White, A. R., Nathan, N. L. and Faller, J. K. 2015. What Do I Need to Vote? Bureaucratic Discretion and Discrimination by Local Election Officials. American Political Science Review 109(1): 129–142.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wolbrecht, C. and Campbell, D. E. 2007. Leading by Example: Female Members of Parliament as Political Role Models. American Journal of Political Science 51(4): 921–939.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Magni and Ponce de Leon supplementary material

Online Appendix

Download Magni and Ponce de Leon supplementary material(File)
File 54.8 KB
Supplementary material: Link

Magni and Ponce de Leon Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/VVXJBJ
Link