Underrepresentation Makes Women More Electable—But Not to Right-Wing Elites

Why Party Leaders Matter

Party leaders control which names appear on ballots, and their choices shape how representative parliaments look. Malu Gatto and Marco Radojevic ask whether party elites respond when women are visibly underrepresented on candidate lists—do selectors nominate more women when the gender gap is highlighted?

What the Authors Did

Gatto and Radojevic ran a large-scale conjoint experiment with 1,389 party elites in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. The design presented elites with competing aspirants and manipulated information about the gender balance of candidate lists, allowing the authors to estimate how awareness of women’s underrepresentation affects elites’ preferences over otherwise similar candidates.

Key Findings

• Overall, the clearer the underrepresentation of women on lists, the more likely elites were to favor women aspirants.
• The effect of signalling underrepresentation was strongest among centrists and male selectors—groups for whom promoting gender equality may not be a settled priority, but who appear responsive to cues about imbalance.
• Left-wing and female selectors—who already place higher intrinsic value on gender equality—also increased their preference for women when underrepresentation was salient.
• Right-wing party elites showed no measurable shift in selection behavior when confronted with information about gender imbalance.

What This Means for Parties and Representation

The experimental evidence suggests that making underrepresentation visible can nudge many selectors toward choosing women, but the effect is uneven across ideological and demographic lines. Signalling imbalance could be a pragmatic tool for parties and advocates seeking short-term increases in women’s nominations, while its limits indicate that deeper ideological commitments or incentives are still needed to change behavior among some elites.

Where This Fits In

This study contributes experimental evidence to debates on candidate selection, gender parity, and party gatekeeping, showing how information cues interact with selectors’ ideology and gender to shape who gets on the ballot.