Women's Legislative Underrepresentation: Enough Come Forward, (Still) Too Few Chosen

What is it about?

No established liberal democracy has achieved sex-balance in its national legislature. Scholars agree skewed candidate pools put forward by parties during elections cause sex-disproportionate seat distribution, but disagree as to whether disproportionality is caused by too few women aspirant candidates coming forward (supply) or party selectors preferring men (demand). This paper uses a multistage method to explore supply and demand during the British Labour party’s candidate selection process. Rare data from three elections and 4622 aspirants allow for an unobstructed look inside the secret garden of politics and reveal the party is not fully feminized insofar that women aspirants are disproportionally filtered out of its selection process and are disproportionally under-represented in its candidate pool. Testing reveals a lack of selector demand for women aspirants has a greater impact on women’s under-representation than an under-supply of women aspirants: a finding which supports using sex quotas to level imbalanced candidate slates.

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Why is it important?

Uses data to test supply- and demand-side arguments to do with party candidate selection processes and descriptive under-representation of marginalized groups. Scholars agree skewed candidate pools put forward by parties during elections cause sex-disproportionate seat distribution, but disagree as to whether disproportionality is caused by too few women aspirant candidates coming forward (supply) or party selectors preferring men (demand). This paper uses a multistage method to explore supply and demand during the British Labour party’s candidate selection process. Rare data from three elections and 4622 aspirants allow for an unobstructed look inside the secret garden of politics and reveal the party is not fully feminized insofar that women aspirants are disproportionally filtered out of its selection process and are disproportionally under-represented in its candidate pool. Testing reveals a lack of selector demand for women aspirants has a greater impact on women’s under-representation than an under-supply of women aspirants: a finding which supports using sex quotas to level imbalanced candidate slates.