Election aversion, competition aversion or political aversion? Testing the reasons behind the gender gap in political ambition.

Women are consistently found to have lower levels of ambition to enter politics than men, which may cause problems for the recruitment and selection of women for a political mandate. In order to improve our understanding of the gender gap in political ambition, this paper digs deeper into the mechanisms behind it. It has been demonstrated that the gender gap in political ambition may be attributed to the fact that women feel less comfortable in the competitive and strategic context of campaigns and elections. Kanthak & Woon (2015), for example, found that whereas women show similar levels of ambition when a mandate is allotted randomly, they exhibit lower levels of ambition when this is done through an election. We further explore this mechanism by studying women’s and men’s ambition for three different positions: an elected mandate as representative, a position as collaborator of a politician with multiple aspirants, and a position as collaborator of a politician without any other aspirants. The analysis of the results among 1,000 Belgian citizens (aged 18-35 years old) will allow us to determine whether it is election aversion (if only the first position shows a gender gap), competition aversion (if for the first two positions a gender gap occurs), or political aversion (if all positions have a gender gap) that drives lower levels of ambition among women. As such, we hope to better understand the barriers that hold women from aspiring a position in the political world.