Do Party Primaries Punish Female Candidates? The Effects of the Type of Selectorate on Women’s Selection as Party Leaders

Hitherto, the literature has found that contrary to initially thought party primaries are not a handicap for women becoming party leaders. However empirical studies tend to select by the dependent variable, the gender of party leaders. To overcome this constraint, in this paper we look at the gender of the candidates for the party leadership at the federal and regional level across seven Western countries (Australia, Canada, UK, Belgium, Germany, Austria and Spain) since the mid-1980s, and how the type of selectorate affect to their probability of being selected as party chair and/or as electoral leader. This range of countries and time period let us analyze the effect of different types of leadership selectorate, from the most exclusive to the most inclusive ones. In addition, decentralization offers researchers new grounds for cross-national comparative research. This empirical strategy allows us to substantially expand the number of observations per country while also facilitating the analysis of gender outcomes across parties in a more comprehensive way. In doing so, we expect to shed new light on the institutional constraints that produce different career opportunities for female and male candidates.