Stands for Me or Acts for Me? Trade-Offs Between Women’s Symbolic and Substantive Representation

This paper investigates the trade-offs between symbolic and substantive representation in women's political representation, returning to Dovi’s (2002) fundamental question of representation “Will just any woman do?”. While women remain underrepresented in parliaments around the world, empirical studies suggest that voter bias is no longer the main explanation, at least in high-income democracies. Recent evidence in candidate choice experiments finds a preference for women candidates, especially amongst women citizens. In this study, we seek to unpack the black box of this gender affinity effect: is shared identity (symbolic representation) the primary driver? To what extent are women willing to give up policy congruence (substantive representation) to see women elected? And how does this vary across issue areas? Using a combination of novel choice-based survey questions and conjoint paired-profile experiments we seek to understand issue salience and preferences across countries and the interaction of this with candidate choice and shared identity. As the policy agenda continues to be shaped by, and for, the male perspective (Persson et al 2023) these are vital contributions to a more diverse and representative democracy.