How do statutory quotas and gender bias in political recruitment affect the quality of democratic representation ensured by women?
I test the predictions of a two-stage accountability model in which the party selectorate has a gender bias when picking freshman candidates. Next election, incumbent candidates are reevaluated in light of their performance in office. Exogenously set gender quotas introduce additional uncertainty to female candidacies.
This paper relies on 15 years of data (1999-2014) on the effort, performance and reselection of members of the European Parliament. Results indicate that women perform better than men for two, alternative reasons:
Women who pass the initial hurdle of recruitment in systems without quotas, perform better at equal levels of effort than all other representatives. It is because they are higher-type representatives.
When quotas are imposed, the selectorate counters their increased uncertainty by relying more heavily on in-office performance. This induces women to exert greater effort so as to perform better. Their higher performance is thus due to harder work.
