Winning women

Sunday, April 5, 2015 - 23:30 in Psychology & Sociology

Political parties find that their fortunes improve when they put more women on the ballot, according to a study co-authored by an MIT economist. The study analyzes changes to municipal election laws in Spain, which a decade ago began requiring political parties to have women fill at least 40 percent of the slots on their electoral lists. With other factors being equal, the research found, parties that increased their share of female candidates by 10 percentage points more than their opponents enjoyed a 4.2 percentage-point gain at the ballot box, or an outright switch of about 20 votes per 1,000 cast. “When you force a party to field more women, they gain votes,” says Albert Saiz, the Daniel Rose Professor of Urban Economics and Real Estate in MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning, and director of MIT’s Center for Real Estate, who is co-author of a forthcoming paper detailing the study. Saiz...

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