Gender, Political Behaviour and Representation in ‘Preferential’ Electoral Systems

The workshop examines the gender effects of preferential voting systems, and gender-based voting (same-sex voting; Holli and Wass 2010; Plutzer and Zipp 1996) in particular. When a sufficient pool of qualified candidates from both genders is available, preferential systems provide citizens with an opportunity to express their gender preferences. This option may alter the structure of the vote choice by bringing stereotypes into play (Sanbonmatsu 2002) and/or interacting with various contextual factors. Although gender-based voting is important for understanding how individual political behaviour impacts gendered representation, knowledge about its causes, effects and relationship to the existing body of research remains scarce. The workshop attempts to remedy this, by addressing the following questions: • Are there differences regarding the degree of gender-based voting among women and men, and across preferential systems? What are the factors (individual/contextual) accounting for them? • To what extent are there differences regarding the use of preferential voting options within one country (national/regional/municipal)? Do such differences impact gendered representation across levels of governance? • What are the effects of gendered choices on the electoral results in preferential systems? Moreover, how do these outcomes relate to those achieved in other (e.g. closed list PR/majoritarian) systems? • What are the methodological/theoretical challenges involved when studying gender and voting in systems with preferential voting options? We invite papers addressing one or several of these questions; single-country case-studies and comparative analyses, as well as papers engaging in theoretical or methodological reflections on the study of gender-based voting are welcome