Gendered electoral systems in the French Sénat

Abstract:

A longstanding but contested hypothesis in political science suggests that proportional (rather than majoritarian) electoral systems tend to increase the share of legislative seats held by women. While scholars have used a variety of empirical methodologies to test this hypothesis, they have mostly neglected legislatures where different parts of the country use different electoral systems. This note looks at women’s election to the longest-established legislative body using such a mixed electoral system: the upper house of the French parliament, the Sénat, where high-population constituencies use proportional elections but low-population constituencies use a majoritarian system. Among elections to the Sénat from 1959 to 2014, regression estimates indicate that women’s share of seats is approximately 10 percentage points higher in proportionally allocated elections, all else being equal. This finding both contributes to the literature linking gender to electoral systems and shows the potential value of considering understudied institutions.