RESEARCH

Abstract:

Do natural disasters systematically disadvantage women politicians? I argue that crises lead voters to favor leadership traits they associate with men, producing a penalty against women candidates that falls on them whatever their record in office. Using Chile's 2010 Maule earthquake and candidate-level records from six municipal council elections (2004-2024), I compare women and men competing on the same party lists across more and less affected municipalities before and after the disaster. Women candidates in highly affected municipalities lost about a quarter of their within-list vote share relative to men. The penalty emerges in the first post-earthquake election, persists through 2024, and leaves fewer women on affected councils. The evidence points to voters' stereotypes rather than judgments of performance. Women challengers, who held no seat when the earthquake struck and so have no record to judge, are penalized as much as women overall, and the penalty does not track the local disaster response. The penalty also reaches the candidate pool, as fewer women run in affected municipalities. In the one major party that selects candidates centrally, the pool of women candidates did not shrink, yet its women still lost votes, so the penalty cannot be explained by weaker women running. As climate change increases the frequency and intensity of natural disasters, the gendered electoral penalties they produce may become an underappreciated and self-reinforcing barrier to gender parity in elected office.

Presented at:

APE Seminar (Stockholm University - February 2026); "New Approaches to Studying the Gender Gap" Workshop (Johns Hopkins University - March 2026); MPSA 2026 (Chicago, USA - April 2026); Bocconi-UniMi/NASP Joint Seminar Series in Political Science (University of Milan - May 2026);  EUI Political Behavior Colloquium (European University Institute - June 2026); ECPG 2026 (Newcastle University - June 2026); EPSS (Belfast, UK - June 2026); APSA 2026 (Boston, USA - September 2026); Women in Leadership: Accelerating Development Outcomes Conference (LSE - September 2026).

Upcoming presentations: Boccoi-UniMi PhD Workshop in Political Science (Bocconi University - December 2026); 16th Alpine Population Conference (AlPop) (Aosta Valley, IT - January 2027).

Abstract:

Women and men differ systematically in their policy preferences, but it is unclear whether these differences persist among political elites or are attenuated through the political process. Using harmonized data from the European Social Survey and the Comparative Candidate Survey across 21 European countries between 2002 and 2021, we compare gender gaps in policy preferences among voters, candidates, and elected officials. Gender gaps are large among voters but attenuate sharply at the candidate stage and continue to compress among elected officials. They do not vary with party discipline, political experience, party tenure, or age at party entry, which aligns with the idea of selection at the point of candidacy. The policy domain of same-sex rights is an exception: gaps survive every stage, consistent with what we term a gendered analog of issue ownership. Our findings suggest that descriptive representation translates into substantive divergence only on dimensions where group-based preferences survive political selection.

Presented at (** = by coauthors):

IVICA Political Behavior and Institutions (PoBI) Workshop (Vienna, Austria - May 2025); SISP 2025 (Naples, Italy - September 2025); **SIEP 2025 (Naples, Italy - September 2025);  **EPCS 2026 (Madrid, Spain - March 2026).