Party Quotas, Candidate Training, and Gender Difference in Resources and Support to Run for Office in Australia: 1996-2013

The under-representation of women in Australian politics has led both major political parties to adopt different strategies to increase the number of women candidates. The Australian Labor Party adopted various internal party quotas aiming at increasing the percentage of women candidates. By contrast, state branches of the Liberal party implemented candidate training programs in the mid-1990s aiming to provide women with the skills needed to run for office. Yet these programs were short lived and were discontinued by the 2000s. Both approaches have the potential to be unsuccessful if women candidates do not have access the necessary support and resources. Previous findings have shown that women candidates received fewer financial and party resources and received less support and encouragement to run for office than their male counterparts. Using the Australian Candidate Survey (ACS) from 1996 to 2013, this paper aims to assess whether, over time, the gender gap in support and encouragement to run for office decreases. Since both gender quotas and candidate training programs have been suggested as solutions to women’s continued under-representation, their success might be limited if women candidates still faced higher barriers to entry despite their implementation. This has important consequences for understanding women’s success at the polls. If political parties still provide less support for women’s candidacies despite their commitment to reverse the situation, women will be less likely to get elected than men.