Attitudes to gender quotas: Why and where to adjust gender imbalance in leadership
Professors Ragnhild Muriaas and Yvette Peters have published a new article in European journal of Political Research. They use survey experiments for both the Norwegian Citizen Panel and the Panel of Elected Representatives.
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Using the Norwegian Citizen Panel and the Panel of Elected Representatives, Muriaas and Peters uses a survey experiment to field questions with different vignettes to the respondents signalling different places to use gender quotas, they do find differences between the two panels.
Read the article here: Attitudes to gender quotas: Why and where to adjust gender imbalance in leadership
Abstract:
When individuals are confronted with information about why and where gender quotas should apply, does it affect their attitudes?
A growing literature argues that information affects opinions on gender equality, but so far there is more consensus on who supports such policies than on what type of information convinces those on the fence. Using a survey experiment fielded among Norwegian citizens and elected representatives, we examine the potential of new rationales and different areas of application to find out what makes (some) people more supportive of gender quotas.
Overall, we find that citizens are more affected by moral arguments than elected representatives. Among citizens, we find that emphasizing women's distinct insights boosts support among those with less fixed opinions, and that a talent framing hinting at women as an untapped resource might cause the opposite reaction. Representatives are affected by information about where gender quotas apply, as they are particularly sensitive to information on gender quotas in politics.
Quite unexpectedly, we find that those on the right are more supportive of gender quotas in the leadership of religious institutions than elsewhere, and that this seems to be driven at least partly by scepticism against migrants.