Why are women underrepresented in politics? This paper documents gender differences in the career paths of novice … politicians by studying the persistence of candidates after they win or lose elections. I track the political trajectories of over … to run again within the next four years, whereas the drop for women is 25 percentage points. Yet the gender gap in …

We model voters' gender bias as a prejudice on women's competence coming from a distorted prior. We analyse the effect … female politicians are less likely to win office but, when elected have higher competence on average. As a consequence, they … choose to seek re-election more often. We also show that if parties endogenously select candidates, the effect of gender bias …

in the declining dynastic bias over time (as more women enter politics), and in the differential effect of a gender quota …

difference-in-discontinuities design, I then show that the gender gap in the probability of being elected has long …

relative or spouse. We provide a theoretical explanation for this dynastic bias in gender representation that integrates … counterparts. Moreover, the role of informational inequalities in explaining the dynastic bias in gender representation is … empirically supported by a declining gap over time, and following the introduction of a gender quota in Sweden. …

agency model to illustrate how voters' gender bias can lead reelection-seeking female politicians to undertake different … policies to be less effective if decided by women, the model predicts that female politicians undertake less containment effort … than male politicians when voters perceive the threat as low, while the opposite is true when voters perceive it as serious …

: (1) to analyse whether the gender of elected politicians is relevant to the educational achievements of residents of the … Indian districts in which they were elected; (2) to test whether politicians are more sensitive to the needs of people of the … same gender; (3) to explore the possible channels through which these relationships operate. By applying instrumental …

of female mayors substantially. The results are stronger in cities with a high pre-reform share of female politicians and … that direct election regimes ease the selection of competent politicians into office. …

In this paper we study whether and how the belief that the gender of politicians affects their competence on different …-specific gender bias in elections which can describe both the presence of a real comparative advantage ('kernel-of-truth' case, or …