Money matters: The impact of gender quotas on campaign spending for women candidates
| Author | Fiona Buckley,Mack Mariani |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/01925121211041028 |
| Published date | 01 January 2023 |
| Date | 01 January 2023 |
https://doi.org/10.1177/01925121211041028
International Political Science Review
2023, Vol. 44(1) 59 –76
© The Author(s) 2021
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/01925121211041028
journals.sagepub.com/home/ips
Money matters: The impact
of gender quotas on campaign
spending for women candidates
Fiona Buckley
University College Cork, Ireland
Mack Mariani
Xavier University, USA
Abstract
Despite concerns that women candidates are hampered by gender gaps in campaign financing, few scholars
have examined how gender quotas impact women candidates’ access to campaign funds. We examine the
effect of a party-based gender quota on women candidates’ financing and electoral success in Ireland. Under
the gender quota, the number of women candidates increased and parties acted strategically to provide
women challengers with increased financial support. However, women challengers spent less candidate
funds than men challengers and were less likely to have prior officeholding experiences associated with
fundraising. Women challengers’ disadvantage is concerning because candidate expenditures are associated
with winning votes. Our findings show that the effectiveness of a gender quota is partly determined by how
the quota interacts with the campaign finance system and the political opportunity structure.
Keywords
Gender quotas, women in politics, campaign finance, money and elections, candidate selection, political
parties
Introduction
Campaign spending can be a critical component to electoral success across a variety of electoral
systems (Benoit and Marsh, 2010: 159–160). Although women candidates raise as much as men in
the USA (Burrell, 2014), women in many other countries face fundraising disadvantages (Cigane
and Öhman, 2014; Sidhu and Meena, 2007; Tovar, 2007). Moreover, in the USA and elsewhere,
women and men are not similarly situated when it comes to factors associated with raising money:
Corresponding author:
Fiona Buckley, Department of Government and Politics, University College Cork, College Road, Cork, T12K8AF, Ireland.
Email f.buckley@ucc.ie
1041028IPS0010.1177/01925121211041028International Political Science ReviewBuckley and Mariani
research-article2021
Special Issue Article
60 International Political Science Review 44(1)
women are less likely to be incumbents (Schwindt-Bayer, 2005), more likely to run in non-com-
petitive races (Murray, 2008) and less able to leverage political experiences and professional con-
tacts to raise money (Ballington and Kahane, 2014; Carroll and Sanbonmatsu, 2013; Hillman,
2018; Sidhu and Meena, 2007). As Murray (this issue) points out, women face a number of gen-
der-based disadvantages that make it more difficult to raise money, including the gender pay gap,
gender inequities in candidate selection processes, sexist abuse and family responsibilities.
In recognition of social, political and financial barriers facing women candidates, some nations
have introduced gender quotas to increase women’s representation (Dahlerup and Freidenvall,
2010; Krook, 2007, 2009). Though they take different forms, when party leaders and organisations
have considerable control over the candidate-selection process, gender quotas incentivise parties to
nominate a minimum percentage of women. Whether and how much gender quotas increase wom-
en’s representation depends on quota design (Dahlerup and Freidenvall, 2005, 2010; Dean and Dos
Santos, 2017) and how the quota interacts with different elements of the electoral system.
In systems where fundraising is key to candidate success, party-based gender quotas may do
little to advance women’s representation if women lack the funds necessary to run competitive
races. However, few studies have examined the impact of gender quotas on campaign finances.
Accordingly, we extend the research on this subject through a case-study that examines the impact
of a party-based gender quota law on campaign expenditures in Ireland. Do quotas level the finan-
cial playing field for women candidates? Do parties respond to quotas by increasing support for
women candidates or redouble their efforts to protect entrenched party men? Are women candi-
dates better able to leverage campaign funds to win votes under a quota system? Addressing these
questions and understanding what happened in Ireland – and why – can help explain how gender
quota laws impact women candidates’ campaign finances, both directly in terms of money spent by
candidates and parties, and indirectly through candidate selection.
Our analysis of four elections – three prior to the quota and one afterward – finds that Irish par-
ties responded to the quota by strategically and pragmatically providing funding to less-experi-
enced women challengers. At the same time, women challengers nominated by parties under the
quota had lower levels of campaign spending than men and were less likely to have prior office-
holding experiences associated with candidate fundraising and electoral success.
Gender quotas and women’s representation
Since the mid-1990s, numerous countries adopted gender quotas for legislative elections (Dahlerup
and Freidenvall, 2005, 2010; Krook, 2009; Tripp and Kang, 2008). Gender quotas have been
implemented across a range of electoral systems and take numerous forms, including voluntary
party quotas, government-mandated party quotas, alternating lists and reserved seats (Dahlerup
and Freidenvall, 2005; Krook, 2007). Though gender quotas are intended to alter political oppor-
tunity structures so more women are nominated and elected, the quotas themselves are ‘nested’ and
‘bounded’ within existing norms of practice (Mackay, 2014). The extent to which a quota increases
women’s descriptive representation depends on many factors, including quota design and how it
interacts with features of the electoral system (Dahlerup and Freidenvall, 2005, 2010; Krook, 2007;
Wylie and Dos Santos, 2016).
Researchers find gender quotas are more effective at increasing women’s representation when
adopted under closed-list proportional representation systems with multiple parties and high levels
of district magnitude (Jones, 1998; Krook, 2007), when the quotas are legally mandated rather than
voluntary (Dahlerup and Freidenvall, 2010; Pruysers et al., 2017), and when parties face meaning-
ful penalties for failing to meet the quota (Pruysers et al., 2017; Rosen, 2017) rather than incentives
To continue reading
Request your trial