Replication Data for: How to Elect More Women: Gender and Candidate Success in a Field Experiment

Women are dramatically underrepresented in legislative bodies, and most scholars agree that the greatest limiting factor is the lack of female candidates (supply). However, voters’ subconscious biases (demand) may also play a role, particularly among conservatives. We designed an original field experiment to test whether it is possible to increase women’s electoral success through political party leaders’ efforts to exogenously shock the supply of female candidates and/or voter demand for female representatives. The key experimental treatments involved messages from a state Republican Party chair to the leaders of 1,842 precinct-level caucus meetings. We find that party leaders’ efforts to stoke both supply and demand (and especially both together) increase the number of women elected as delegates to the statewide nominating convention. We then replicate this finding with a national sample of validated Republican primary election voters (N=2,897) using a vignette survey experiment. Our results suggest that simple interventions from party leaders can affect the behavior of candidates and voters and ultimately lead to a substantial increase in women’s electoral success.

立法机构中女性代表占比严重偏低，大多数学者认为最核心的制约因素是女性候选人供给不足（supply）。但选民的潜意识偏见（demand）同样可能产生影响，尤其是在保守派群体中。本研究设计了一项原创性田野实验，旨在检验政党领导人能否通过外生冲击女性候选人供给和/或选民对女性议员的需求，提升女性的选举成功率。核心实验干预手段为：某州共和党主席向1842个选区基层党团会议的负责人发送相关讯息。研究结果显示，政党领导人同时推动供给端与需求端（尤其是双端协同发力）的举措，能够增加当选为全州提名代表大会代表的女性人数。随后，本研究采用情景调查实验（vignette survey experiment），基于样本量N=2,897的经核实共和党初选选民全国样本，重复验证了上述研究结论。本研究结果表明，政党领导人推出的简易干预举措，能够影响候选人和选民的行为，最终大幅提升女性的选举成功率。