Governments in Europe are increasingly introducing gender quotas to enhance women’s presence on electoral lists. The underlying assumption is that a rise in the number of female candidates will also increase the presence of women in parliament. However, many studies demonstrate that gender-balanced lists do not automatically produce gender-balanced parliaments.
In open-list systems, the election of more women depends on voters’ behavior. By casting preference votes, voters have an important say in deciding which candidates gain a seat in parliament. Voters’ preference for a (fe)male candidate is known to depend on their individual ‘baseline gender preference’ (Sanbonmatsu 2002: 20). In this paper, we explore whether and how preference voting is structured by contextual factors, namely the number of female list candidates. We hypothesize that the number of female candidates on the list influences (1) the number of preference votes women receive and (2) the dispersion of these votes among female candidates. As the number of women on the list increases, their visibility does as well, which could lead to a higher number of preference votes for women and a higher proportion of elected women. The increased dispersion of votes resulting from the wider choice of female candidates could however also lead to fewer women getting elected.
In the empirical part, we analyze the number and the dispersion of preference votes for women on electoral lists in Belgium over time (1985-2010). Belgium has introduced legally binding quotas at two occasions. The 1994 law stipulated that at least one third of candidates on lists should be women. The 2002 parity laws demand gender parity on lists as well as an alternation of the sexes in the top 2 of the list. The progressive introduction of more strict demands over time makes Belgium an interesting case for studying contextual determinants for preference voting.
