Journal of Public Economics 94 (2010) 344353

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Journal of Public Economics

j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w. e l s e v i e r. c o m / l o c a t e / j p u b e

Can gender quotas break down negative stereotypes? Evidence from changes in
electoral rules
Maria De Paola , Vincenzo Scoppa, Rosetta Lombardo
Department of Economics and Statistics, University of Calabria, Arcavacata di Rende, Italy

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: In this paper, we analyze the effect of gender quotas on women's involvement in political activity by using a
Received 21 May 2009 rich data set providing information on all Italian local administrators who were elected from 1985 to 2007.
Received in revised form 18 December 2009 Gender quotas were introduced by law in Italy in 1993 and were in force until 1995. Because of the short
Accepted 9 February 2010
period covered by the reform, some municipalities never voted under the gender quota regime. This allows
Available online 13 February 2010
us to identify a treatment and a control group and to estimate the effects of gender quotas by using a
difference-in-differences estimation strategy. Our estimates show that women's representation in politics
JEL classication:
D72
after the reform increased signicantly more in municipalities that were affected by the reform than in
D78 municipalities that were not affected. This result also holds true if we exclude from our analysis elections
J71 which took place during the period in which the reform was in force. Moreover, the higher women's
J16 representation in gender quota municipalities is not related to the advantages that women who were
elected during the reform have obtained from incumbency and does not seem to be driven by differences in
Keywords: temporal trends between Southern and Northern regions. These ndings suggest that afrmative actions can
Afrmative actions be of use in breaking down stereotypes against women.
Gender quotas
2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Discrimination
Stereotypes
Politicians
Natural experiment

1. Introduction
In nearly every country both developed and less developed
women are still underrepresented in national parliaments and in other
representative institutions. On average, in 2006, fewer than 17% of
parliament seats were assigned to women1 and the gender imbalance
appears to be diminishing only very slowly (see UNICEF, 2007).
These gures seem to be the result of a number of factors which
continue to hamper the involvement of women in politics. On the one
hand, women may be less inclined to participate in politics due to
limited interest in this type of profession, leading them to devote fewer
resources to the pursuit of political careers, or because of higher entry
costs, in part relating to the strength of incumbency, which makes it
Even though the paper is the result of joint work by the authors, Maria De Paola and
Vincenzo Scoppa are jointly responsible for Sections 3, 4, 5 and 6 and Rosetta Lombardo
for Section 2. Section 1 is joint responsibility of the three authors.
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: m.depaola@unical.it (M. De Paola), v.scoppa@unical.it (V. Scoppa),
r.lombardo@unical.it (R. Lombardo).
1
Even though in some countries women have reached almost equal representation
(e.g., 47.3% of elected representatives in the Swedish parliament in 2006), women are still
far behind in most countries: 17.3% in the 2006 Italian Parliamentary elections; 18.5% in the
2007 French Parliamentary elections; 19.9% in the 2005 United Kingdom elections and
31.8% in the 2005 German elections (IDEA at http://www.quotaproject.org).
easier for elected ofcials (prevailingly males for historical reasons) to
be re-elected in successive contests. On the other hand, women may
face cultural barriers which hinder their participation in politics, since
this violates traditional gender roles. In addition, male-dominated
parties may oppose female candidacies, both because of the fear of
losing rent-positions, typically reserved for men and because female
candidates may be thought of as less able to attract voters. In fact,
voters may dislike female participation in politics, as there is still a
strong division of gender roles in many cultures, or voters may believe
that women are less competent as policy makers.
In order to enhance female participation in policymaking, many
countries have introduced norms reserving political positions for
women (political reservations or gender quotas). As reported by Duo
(2005), quotas for women in parliaments were in force in more than
30 countries in 2001. Institutional changes are considered a useful
method of increasing female participation in politics, since cultural
and social norms, which seem to have hindered women's political
empowerment, tend to change very slowly.
The rationale for increasing women's representation is that female
legislators tend to raise distinctive issues and priorities within the
public agenda and give particular attention to women's interests
(Pande, 2003; Chattopadhyay and Duo, 2004a,b; Chen, 2009). As a
consequence, correcting the imbalances in political representation
helps to correct the imbalances in other spheres as well (Sen, 1999).

0047-2727/$ see front matter 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jpubeco.2010.02.004
 M. De Paola et al. / Journal of Public Economics 94 (2010) 344353
Yet another argument for increasing women's participation in
politics is the belief that they are less corrupt than men. Several
studies have shown a correlation between rates of women in
government and lower levels of corruption at both national (Dollar
et al., 2001) and local levels (Kudva, 2001).
An interesting issue is whether afrmative actions (such as gender
quotas) are able to break down negative stereotypes about the
capabilities of women in politics. From a theoretical point of view, the
effects of such action may be either positive or negative. On the one
hand, exposure to female politicians may contribute to a change in
citizens' attitudes with regards to appropriate roles for women
(Dasgupta and Asgari, 2004). In addition, when anti-female prejudices
are based on the idea that women are poor policy makers, being
exposed to greater female involvement in politics may help voters to
modify these beliefs. On the other hand, if elected women have less
experience and, as a consequence, their performance is not as good as
that of their male colleagues, gender quotas may produce, at least in
the short term, negative effects on women's representation. In fact,
voters may not take differences in experience into account in their
evaluations and may conclude that female politicians are simply not
as good as male politicians. Furthermore, a gender quota may result in
even stronger bias against women if female politicians are perceived
as violating appropriate gender roles (Rudman and Fairchild, 2004).
Analyses trying to investigate empirically the effects of gender
quotas on stereotypes about women encounter a number of problems
due to the fact that it is hard to disentangle the effects of the
intervention from other confounding factors related to temporal
trends. More importantly, when the reservation of places becomes a
permanent institutional feature, it is difcult to distinguish the effects
directly related to the application of these rules from the impact that
they may have in eliminating prejudices and in changing cultural
attitudes regarding gender roles and, therefore, the electorate's
perceptions regarding women's capabilities in politics.
In this paper, we are able to overcome both of these problems
thanks to a natural experiment produced by the introduction in Italy,
for a short period of time, of statutory quotas establishing a minimum
number of candidacies by gender.
Gender quotas, reserving a percentage of the places in the party
lists for Municipal Council elections for female candidates, were
introduced in Italy in 1993 and repealed in 1995 by the Constitutional
Court. Given the short time this law was in force, and the scheduling of
local election races, not all Italian municipalities voted under the
gender quotas system. In fact, only municipalities that had an election
in the period between April 1993 and September 1995 were affected
by the reform. As a consequence, thanks to casual factors that led
municipalities to vote or not in the reform period, we are able to
identify a treatment and a control group. By comparing women's
representation in politics in the two groups of municipalities, we
disentangle the effects of the introduction of quotas from temporal
trends relating to other factors. In addition, by exploiting the
temporary adoption of gender quotas, we can test whether their
effects have persisted over time since their abolition: this analysis
allows us to verify whether the institutional change produced
permanent effects regarding the electorate's attitudes towards
women and the propensity of political parties to include more
women among their candidates.
To analyze these aspects, we use a rich administrative data set
providing information regarding the gender, age, education and
occupation of all the members of about 8100 Italian Municipal
Councils elected between 1985 and 2007. Moreover, we have
analogous information about the Mayors and the components of the
Executive Committees heading municipal governments.
We use a difference-in-differences estimator to compare the
changes in women's representation rates (measured as the percent-
age of females on the Municipal Council or on the Executive
Committee Council) for municipalities affected by the 1993 reform
345
with those which were not affected. From our estimates, it emerges
that there was a common sharp increase in female political
involvement in the treatment and the control group after 1993, but
female representation increased signicantly more in those munic-
ipalities directly affected by the reform.
By excluding the outcomes of the elections which took place
between 1993 and 1995 from our sample, we show that the effects of
gender quotas have continued since the reform was abolished,
supporting the idea that afrmative action may play an important
role in overcoming negative stereotypes. In addition, it does not seem
that the effects have declined over time.
To check the robustness of our results we rst apply our model to a
different sample, which only includes in the treatment group those
municipalities that neighbor on at least one of those included in the
control group. Our main results remain substantially unchanged.
Secondly, in order to show that our ndings are not driven by
different temporal trends among Southern and Northern regions, we
interact our variables of interest with a dummy variable for the South.
Once again, municipalities affected by the reform show a higher
female representation regardless of their geographical location.
We also investigate whether the observed greater participation of
women in politics is due to the continuing presence in the political
arena of those women who were elected under the quota system or
whether other women have been elected subsequently. The advan-
tages of incumbency and the opportunity to gain personal credibility
might favor the persistence in politics of those women elected under
the gender quota system, without implying that electors have
changed their beliefs regarding the political capabilities of women
as a group. Our estimates show that, in those municipalities affected
by gender quotas, a larger proportion of new female candidates is
elected than in municipalities which never voted under the gender
quota system.
Finally, some suggestive evidence, using data on candidatures for
mayoral elections, shows that voter bias favoring men is weaker in
municipalities directly affected by gender quotas.
The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 discusses the related
literature. In Section 3, the Italian institutional framework and the data
are presented. In Section 4, we present difference-in-differences es-
timate results. In Section 5, we offer a set of robustness checks. Section 6
concludes.
2. Related literature
Despite the widespread agreement that gender inequalities have
not been eradicated, there is less agreement on the extent to which
those inequalities might be reduced by policy interventions. This issue
has recently received renewed attention within the study of
stereotypes.
Gender and minority problems were rst analyzed, in economic
theory, in relation to the functioning of labor markets. The empirical
literature on discrimination, following the contribution of Becker
(1957), has mainly focused on disparities in earnings between males
and females.
Afrmative action, involving active steps to help disadvantaged
groups, has often been implemented in order to eliminate inequalities
among groups. The advocates of quotas point out that preferential
policies tend to break down negative views about disadvantaged
individuals by allowing them to demonstrate their capabilities (Coate
and Loury, 1993).
Similar arguments are used when discussing the efcacy of
afrmative action in politics: women's participation in politics should
help overcome negative stereotypes held by voters and parties that
oppose the presence of women in politics.
Gender quota systems can be classied into two main categories:
(1) the reservation of seats system, ensuring that a given number of
women will be elected; and (2) the reservation of candidates system,
346 M. De Paola et al. / Journal of Public Economics 94 (2010) 344353
ensuring a given minimum number of female candidates. These
systems can be imposed by the constitution or electoral laws or be
adopted by parties on a voluntary basis.
Extensive literature on the formation of public opinion suggests
that low voter awareness can cause stereotypes to play an important
role in shaping voter preferences (Beaman et al., 2008). Social
norms which associate leadership with men causing voters to
favor and elect male candidates are widely discussed and con-
sidered to be a reason which explains why the entry of women into
politics may be hampered by group stereotypes (Akerlof and Kranton,
2000).
Some studies in psychology indicate that gender inequalities may
be eliminated by the provision of information able to disprove
stereotypes (Geis, 1993). In this vein, the introduction of gender
quotas into electoral legislation, might, by exposing voters to women
politicians, render their information more precise regarding the
expected effectiveness of future female leaders and, therefore, reduce
discrimination. However, this process may also bring about negative
effects of gender quotas because, for example, female politicians may
perform worse than their male colleagues due to their relative
inexperience and voters might, therefore, conclude that females are
indeed less competent as policy makers.
Previous works on gender quotas have focused primarily on their
effectiveness in replacing some male ofce-holders with female ones
and have tried to explain variations in quota effectiveness by pointing
to factors such as institutional context, policy design and political will
(Matland, 2006). A number of works show that quotas are more
effective in proportional representation electoral systems (Jones and
Navia, 1999; Schmidt and Saunders, 2004), while others analyze how
the effectiveness of gender quotas is shaped by socioeconomic factors
(Norris, 2006).
Emerging economic literature on women in politics is mostly
concerned with identifying gender differences in the way local policy
is conducted. A number of studies have found that women tend to be
more liberal than men and more likely to support and promote
women's issues. Chattopadhyay and Duo (2004a) analyzed the
consequences, in terms of policy outcomes, of the practice of reserving
head positions on Village Councils for women, as was introduced in
some Indian states in 1993. One third of these Village Councils was
randomly reserved for a woman leader. The authors exploit the
random variation in imposed exposure to female leaders across
villages to compare the type of public goods provided by reserved and
unreserved Village Councils and show that reservation affects policy
decisions in ways that seem to better reect women's preferences.2
These results are consistent with those emerging from studies
analyzing the effects of reservations for other disadvantaged groups.
For example, Pande (2003) shows that in India reservations for some
disadvantaged groups have led to an increase in nancial transfers
toward members of these groups. Similar results emerge from Besley
et al. (2004, 2007), Bardhan et al. (2005) and from Chattopadhyay and
Duo (2004b).
Another interesting eld of research, closely related to our paper, is
concerned with the effects that gender quotas produce on anti-female
prejudices. While a number of works show that discrimination against
women is pervasive, very little work has been devoted to analyzing
the effect that afrmative actions produce on this type of bias. One of
the few research projects which have tried to examine this issue from
an empirical point of view is Beaman et al. (2008). By exploiting the
natural experiment in Indian villages with regards the reserving of
head positions for women, these authors compare villager attitudes
toward hypothetical, and actual, women leaders across councils
2
According to some authors, reservations may result in token appointments where
women are appointed by elites and are poorly educated and aged. However, Ban and
Rao (2008) and Chattopadhyay and Duo (2004a) do not nd evidence in favor of this
hypothesis.
which have been reserved for women once, twice or never. Random
allocation of reservations implies that a difference in voters' attitudes
across reserved and unreserved villages will capture the causal effect
of having seen a woman as a policy-maker. The authors found that
exposure to a female leader weakens stereotypes about gender roles
and eliminates the negative bias in how a female leaders' effectiveness
is perceived by male villagers, although it does not alter the villagers'
preferences for male leaders. Using data from Mumbai, Bhavnani
(2009) nds that reservations largely work by introducing a group of
female candidates into politics who are able to run for and win
elections, even after the reservations lapse, and by allowing parties to
learn that women can win elections.
Based on the idea that afrmative action may play an important role
in changing cultural attitudes, we try to contribute to this literature
by analyzing the impact that the introduction of gender quotas in Italy
has produced on female involvement in local government.
3. The Italian institutional framework and the data
Municipal administrations are responsible for a number of public
services in Italy, such as the management of public utilities (local
roads, water, sewage, garbage collection, etc.) and the provision of
public housing and transportation, nursery schools, and assistance to
elderly people.
The Municipal Council (Consiglio Comunale) is endowed with
legislative powers, while the executive authority is assigned to a
Mayor (Sindaco) who heads an Executive Committee (Giunta
Comunale). Given that municipal governments are responsible for a
number of very important services which have a great impact on
citizens' daily lives, voters are generally highly interested in their
composition and performance.
Law no. 81 of March 25, 1993, brought in some important changes
in the Italian electoral system. It introduced the direct election of the
mayor, with some differences according to the size of the city.3 More
importantly for our paper, this law also established that neither sex
could represent more than two-thirds of a party's list of candidates for
a Municipal Council election.4 In municipalities with up to fteen
thousand inhabitants, the maximum quota for either sex was set at
three quarters. The reservation of candidacies introduced in Italy by
this law ensured a given minimum number of female candidates, but,
unlike quota systems based on reservation of seats, did not ensure
that a minimum number of females would be elected.
On September 12, 1995 (Sentence no. 422), the Constitutional
Court repealed the reservation quotas declaring that norms establish-
ing that neither sex could constitute more than two-thirds of
candidates were unconstitutional. According to the Court Sentence,
the fundamental right of equal access to elective ofces, as established
by Art. 3 and Art. 51 of the Constitution, cannot be subject to special
treatment on the basis of sex. As a consequence of this sentence, only
those elections which took place between April 1993 and September
1995 were affected by the gender quota reform. To be precise, 7716
municipalities voted during the reform period (treatment group),
while 389 municipalities never voted under this regime (control
3
Seats in the Municipal Council are allocated using an individual-ballot system and
plurality rules. This system was introduced in 1993, replacing a party ballot system.
For cities with a population of fewer than 15,000 inhabitants, elections are held with a
single ballot and the winning candidate is awarded a majority premium of at least
two-thirds of the seats in the council; for municipalities with a population above
15,000, elections are held using a dual ballot (where the second is held only if none of
the candidates obtains an absolute majority of votes in the rst ballot), and the
winning candidate is awarded a majority premium of at least 60% of the seats in the
council.
4
These procedures were also established for Provincial Councils and for the
Chamber of Deputies. In February 1995 (Law no. 43), the same rules were applied to
the election of Regional Councils.
 M. De Paola et al. / Journal of Public Economics 94 (2010) 344353 347

group).5 Of the municipalities in the control group, 179 are located in Table 1
the Center-North of Italy and 210 in the South. Female representation in Italian municipal governments.

Municipal elections in Italy are held every 5 years6 and Municipal Percentage of Gender quota municipalities Non-gender quota
governments cannot choose the election schedule. In certain females in municipalities
circumstances, the legislature may not survive until the end of its 19851992 19931995 19962007 19851992 19962007
legislative term, e.g. because of a mayor's early resignation.7 In these
Municipal Council 0.076 0.184 0.162 0.062 0.136
cases, elections are held before the natural schedule, and, as a (0.073) (0.099) (0.129) (0.075) (0.113)
consequence, all subsequent elections will be held at different times Executive Committee 0.064 0.130 0.143 0.055 0.120
from other municipalities that have completed the foreseen legislative Council (0.105) (0.174) (0.173) (0.102) (0.158)
term. Given this situation, we are very condent that municipalities Mayor 0.029 0.063 0.083 0.045 0.071
(0.169) (0.243) (0.275) (0.208) (0.257)
were not able to decide upon the scheduling of their elections in
relation to the gender quota system. Notes: Standard deviations are in parentheses. For Non-gender quota municipalities,
no elections took place during the period 19931995.
To examine the effects produced by the reform, we use an
administrative data set containing information on gender, age,
education and occupation of all the members of Italian Municipal affected by the reform. A similar increase can also be observed with
Councils elected from 1985 to 2007. The data contains information on regards female mayors and female members of Executive Committees.
about 8100 municipalities which on average voted 5 times.8 The Despite the increase in women's representation during this period,
number of seats on Municipal Councils and on Executive Committees female politicians have continued to have higher levels of education
depends on the population size: seats on Municipal Councils range than their male colleagues.
from 12 to 60 (the median number is 15), while seats on Executive Descriptive statistics show that female involvement in politics over
Committees range from 4 to 16 (the median is 5). the years 19962007, i.e. after the reform was abolished, continued at
We also use the 1991 and 2001 Italian Census of Population to about the same levels reached during the reform period. However,
obtain data, at the municipality level, regarding the size of the female political involvement seems to be signicantly higher in those
resident population, the number of employed individuals and the municipalities that were directly affected by the reform.
average educational attainment of the population. It is worthwhile noting that, in spite of this positive trend, female
The average population size of Italian municipalities is 7018. Only representation in Italian municipalities remains very low, even in
8% of municipalities have a population which is greater than 15,000 municipalities affected by the reform.
inhabitants. The population's number of years in education is, on The increase in female representation observed during the period
average, 6.93 and the ratio between the number of employed in which gender quotas were in force suggests that the introduction of
individuals and the total number of inhabitants is 24.5%. gender quotas has helped reduce voters' or parties' anti-female bias. It
In Table 1, the average number of female members of Municipal may also be true that gender quota have weakened the opposition of
Councils, of Executive Committees and as Mayors are reported male-dominated parties to female candidacies or that gender quotas
(respectively for municipalities affected and not affected by the have reduced female reluctance to take part into political activity by
reform), for the periods before, during and after the gender quotas changing what is perceived to be an appropriate role for women.
regime. Before 1993, Municipal Councils were dominated by men, Nevertheless, the observed rise in female representation could be
with, respectively, only 6.2% and 7.6% of female members in the simply related to changes in cultural attitudes occurring over time
control and the treated groups. Female representation on Executive which would have taken place anyway, even in the absence of any
Committees and as Mayors was even lower. For instance, only 3% of intervention. In the next section, we attempt to identify the causal
mayors were women; this percentage was higher, 4.6%, for munic- effect of gender quotas on women's representation by carrying out an
ipalities not affected by the reform and lower, 2.9%, for those affected. econometric analysis.
In general, female politicians are more educated than males: on
average female members of Municipal Councils have 13.2 years of
education compared to an average number of 11.8 years for males. 4. Gender quotas and female political representation: an
Similarly, with regards to members of executive committees, females econometric analysis
have 14.1 years of education as opposed to the 12.5 years of males.
Finally, female mayors have, on average, 14.8 years of education, In order to analyze the effects of gender quotas on women's
while males have 13.8 years of education. These differences are all involvement in politics, we exploit Law no. 81, introduced in Italy in
statistically signicant at the 1% level. The fact that female politicians 1993 and abolished in 1995, which stated that a given percentage of
in our sample are, on average, more educated than the men is places on party lists of candidates for election to Municipal Councils
consistent with the existence of a bias in favor of male candidates. should be reserved for women.
For the period during which gender quotas were in force, We run municipal-level regressions and use a difference-in-
approximately 19931995, it is possible to observe a considerable differences estimator to compare the changes in women's participa-
increase in women's representation: the share of female seats on tion rates in politics before 1993 and after 1995, considering as a
Municipal Councils increased from 7.6% to 18.3% in the municipalities treatment group those municipalities in which a local election took
place in the period in which the gender quota reform was in force
(Gender quota municipalities), whereas we insert in the control
5
Since legal gender quotas were repealed, some political parties have adopted, on a group those municipalities that did not vote during that period (Non-
voluntary basis, rules setting out a certain percentage of women to be presented as gender quota municipalities). Our key identication assumption is
candidates.
6 that, without the policy intervention, the differences in female
With the exception of the years between 1993 and 1999, when the electoral
mandate had a duration of 4 years. political involvement between treatment and control groups would
7
In greater detail, early termination of the legislature may occur for one of the have remained constant over time.
following reasons: the resignation of the mayor, the resignation of the majority of the In order to take into account the fact that Non-gender quota
council or a vote of no-condence in the council, the death of the mayor, ex-post municipalities might differ from those included in the treatment
incompatibilities or the mayor being charged with a crime. In these cases it is not
possible to form a new governing coalition and anticipated elections are called.
group, we control for a number of municipal characteristics and for
8
The individual-level data were provided by the Statistical Ofce of the Italian provincial dummies. In addition, we also experiment by including
Ministry of Internal Affairs, http://amministratori.interno.it/AmmIndex6.htm. municipal xed effects.
348 M. De Paola et al. / Journal of Public Economics 94 (2010) 344353

We estimate several specications of the following model:
Fit = 1 Quota Municipality + 2 Post Quota
+ 3 PostQuota QuotaMunicipality + 4 Xit + r + it
where Fit is a variable measuring the percentage of women on
Municipal Council i (or on Executive Committee) in election year t;
Quota Municipality is a dummy variable for municipalities affected by
gender quotas; Post Quota is a dummy which takes a value of 1 for
elections taking place after the reform was introduced (from March
1993 to December 2007); Post Quota Quota Municipality is the
interaction term, whose coefcient 3 measures the treatment effect
of our interest, i.e. the difference in the temporal variations of female
political representation between the municipalities voting and not
voting under the gender quota system; Xit is a vector of municipal
characteristics, such as the population size, average years of education
and the fraction of the employed population, r is a vector of
provincial or municipal dummies, and it is an error term.
Results of our OLS estimates are reported in Table 2. In all
specications, standard errors are clustered at the municipal level and
are robust to heteroskedacity.
In column (1), the dependent variable is represented by the
percentage of women elected to the Municipal Council and the sample
used also includes elections taking place in the period 19931995
when the reform was in force.
From our estimates, it emerges that there were no relevant
differences in female representation between municipalities belonging
to the treatment and the control groups before 1993: the dummy
variable Quota Municipality is not statistically signicant. This is
consistent with the assumption that the inclusion in one or the other
of the two groups was due exclusively to casual factors that led
municipalities to vote or not during the reform period. Results show, in
addition, an increase in female political involvement of about 8.1
percentage points in municipalities not affected by gender quotas after
1993. On the other hand, the coefcient on the interaction term is
positive and highly statistically signicant (p-value= 0.000) implying
that the fraction of women elected as members of Municipal Councils in
municipalities directly affected by the reform increased by 2 percentage
points more than in those municipalities not affected by the reform.
The estimated effect of the gender quotas might mainly be due to
the impact that the reform had in the years in which it was
implemented. This direct effect has also been detected in a number
of studies showing that statutory gender quotas have produced a rise
in women's participation in politics in many of the countries that have
introduced them (see Norris, 2006).
A, perhaps, more interesting and less investigated question is
whether the greater political involvement of females can be expected
to continue without gender quotas becoming a permanent institu-
tional factor. Since the gender quota reform was abolished in 1995, we
can analyze this issue by focusing on subsequent elections and
excluding elections taking place in the period 19931995 from our
sample. As it is possible to see in column (2) of Table 2, considering
the percentage of females in the Municipal Council as a dependent
variable, the interaction term still has a positive and highly signicant
coefcient, implying that, even after the reform was abolished, those
municipalities affected by the reform continued to have a higher
female political representation. The proportion of women in politics
increased by 7 percentage points after 1995, but it increased by 1.4
points more in municipalities directly affected by the reform
(statistically signicant at the 1% level). This effect is only slightly
smaller than that estimated in column (1).
In column (3), we analyze the effect of gender quotas on the
fraction of female members on Executive Committees. Again, even
when excluding elections taking place in the period 19931995 from
our sample, gender quota municipalities show a signicantly higher
increase in female political representation.
In column (4), we consider the probability of observing a female
mayor as a dependent variable. In this case too, we observe a positive and
long lasting effect of gender quotas on female involvement in politics.
Our estimation results show that the gender quota reform has increased
the probability of electing a female mayor by 3.1 percentage points.
The magnitude of the estimated effects of gender quotas is not
high, but appears considerable if one takes into account the initially
very low level of female political involvement. Nonetheless, the
gender imbalance in political representation remains marked.
In all the specications in Table 2, we control for municipal
population size and its square, education and employment levels.
From columns (2), (3) and (4), it emerges that population size increases

Table 2
Difference-in-differences estimates of the inuence of the gender quota on women's participation in politics.

Percentage of females

Municipal Council Municipal Council Executive Committee Mayor Municipal Council Executive Committee Mayor

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7)

Post Quota 0.081*** 0.070*** 0.061*** 0.022* 0.063*** 0.056*** 0.019*

(0.005) (0.005) (0.007) (0.012) (0.004) (0.006) (0.012)
Quota Municipality 0.003 0.004 0.007 0.030***
(0.003) (0.003) (0.004) (0.009)
(Quota Municipality) 0.020*** 0.014*** 0.014** 0.031** 0.015*** 0.017*** 0.031***
(Post Quota) (0.005) (0.005) (0.007) (0.012) (0.004) (0.006) (0.011)
Population 0.000*** 0.000*** -0.000 0.000 0.001 0.001 0.003
(0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.001) (0.001) (0.002)
Population squared 0.000*** 0.000*** 0.000** 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000
(0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000)
Employment/population 0.008 0.015** 0.002 0.011 0.043*** 0.038* 0.021
(0.006) (0.007) (0.009) (0.015) (0.014) (0.020) (0.032)
Education 0.001 0.005*** 0.006*** 0.003 0.010*** 0.008*** 0.004
(0.001) (0.001) (0.001) (0.002) (0.001) (0.002) (0.002)
Provincial Fixed Effects Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No
Municipal Fixed Effects No No No No Yes Yes Yes
Sample 19931995 19931995 19931995 19931995 19931995 19931995 19931995
included excluded excluded excluded excluded excluded excluded
Observations 39,358 31,988 31,985 31,961 31,988 31,985 31,961
R-squared 0.221 0.217 0.106 0.024 0.229 0.106 0.018
Number of municipalities 8080 8080 8080

Notes: Standard errors, corrected for heteroskedasticity and adjusted for potential clustering at the municipal level, are reported in parentheses. The symbols ***, **, * indicate that
coefcients are statistically signicant, respectively, at the 1, 5, and 10% level.
 M. De Paola et al. / Journal of Public Economics 94 (2010) 344353 349

Table 3
Difference-in-differences estimates among neighboring municipalities.

Percentage of females

Municipal Council Executive Committee Mayor Municipal Council Executive Committee Mayor

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)

Post Quota 0.073*** 0.062*** 0.014 0.068*** 0.060*** 0.017

(0.005) (0.007) (0.013) (0.005) (0.007) (0.013)
Quota Municipality 0.003 0.007 0.034***
(0.003) (0.005) (0.009)
(Quota Municipality) (Post Quota) 0.009* 0.013* 0.029** 0.012** 0.017** 0.029**
(0.005) (0.007) (0.013) (0.005) (0.007) (0.012)
Provincial Fixed Effects Yes Yes Yes No No No
Municipal Fixed Effects No No No Yes Yes Yes
Sample 19931995 excluded 19931995 excluded 19931995 excluded 19931995 excluded 19931995 excluded 19931995 excluded
Observations 8635 8634 8629 8635 8634 8629
R-squared 0.241 0.138 0.044 0.215 0.105 0.018
Number of municipalities 2103 2103 2103

Notes: In all regressions we include controls for municipal population, population squared, education and employment. Standard errors, corrected for heteroskedasticity and
adjusted for potential clustering at the municipal level, are reported in parentheses. The symbols ***, **, * indicate that coefcients are statistically signicant, respectively, at the 1, 5,
and 10% level.

women's representation in politics (starting from municipalities with a
population larger than 1053); municipalities with a higher level of
education tend to elect more female politicians; the employment rate
does not seem to play a particularly relevant role in dening women's
representation in politics. Coefcients on provincial dummies (not
reported) show that women's representation in politics is particularly
low in Southern Italian Provinces.
In columns (5), (6) and (7), we present results from an alternative
estimation strategy, which controls for municipal xed effects.
Analogously to previous results, we nd that the coefcient on the
interaction term we are interested in is positive and statistically
signicant in all specications and that the effect is very close to that
estimated in the previous specications. The proportion of women
elected to Municipal Councils and Executive Committees have increased,
respectively, by 1.5 and 1.7 percentage points, while the probability of
electing a female mayor has increased by 3.1 percentage points.
Even though we have no reason to think of selection problems
driving our results, xed effect estimates ensure that the effect of gender
quotas on female representation is not due to unobservable municipal
characteristics which, for some reason, is related both to inclusion in the
treatment group and to greater female involvement in political activity.
Moreover, our results showing that female involvement in politics has
remained at relatively higher levels since the gender quotas were
repealed suggest that reservation policies help to overcome stereotypes
against women which hinder their involvement in the political sphere.
In order to deal with the fact that our dependent variables are
proportions (with regards the percentage of females in municipal
councils and executive committees), we have used a beta regression
model (see Ferrari and Cribari-Neto, 2004). Parameter estimations,
performed by maximum likelihood, are consistent with those emerging
from OLS and the interaction term of interest is positive and statistically
signicant. Furthermore, we have experimented by formulating the
dependent variable as a log-odds ratio ln[Fit / (1 Fit)]. In this case too,
results are consistent with OLS estimates (results are not reported and
are available upon request). In the same vein, we have estimated a Probit
model and a Fixed Effects Logit model to take into account the fact that
the dependent variable in regressions (4) and (7) is binary. Results
emerging from these estimates are similar to OLS estimates.
municipalities. In addition, we estimate our model with some
interaction terms in order to verify that our ndings are not driven by
different temporal trends among Southern and Northern municipalities.
Thirdly, we exclude from our sample all the members of Municipal
Councils elected during the gender quota period to neutralize possible
advantages due to incumbency. Finally, we conduct an analysis
providing suggestive evidence on the effect of gender quotas on voter
bias against women.
5.1. Treatment and control groups among neighboring municipalities
In this section, instead of considering all the municipalities affected
by the reform to be in the treatment group, we restrict our attention to
those municipalities that neighbor on at least one of the municipalities
included in the control group. In this way, we select 1714 treated
municipalities (to add to the 389 municipalities in the control group),
ending up with a nal sample including 2103 local governments.9 We
carry out the main specications of our model on this sample. In Table 3,
we present results regarding the proportion of the Municipal Councils
(columns (1) and (4)), the Executive Committees (columns (2) and (5))
and Mayors (columns (3) and (6)) that are female. Our main results
remain substantially unchanged, both when we control for provincial
and for municipal xed effects. The impact of the gender quotas is
signicant and the size of the effect is slightly smaller compared to that
which was estimated when considering the full sample of treated
municipalities.10 Therefore, our results were not driven by comparing
groups of municipalities that are too heterogeneous.
Furthermore, since it is well known that the South of Italy has a
lower level of economic and social development than the North (see,
for example, Guiso et al., 2004), which may cause a different temporal
trend in female representation in politics, we undertake an additional
robustness check in order to show that our results are not driven by
different trends in female political involvement between geographical
regions. We interact our three variables of interest (Post Quota, Quota
Municipality, (Quota Municipality) (Post Quota)) with a dummy
variable South which takes a value of 1 for municipalities located in
Southern regions and zero otherwise.

5. Robustness checks

In this section, we undertake a set of robustness checks of our
ndings. First of all, in order to control for other factors that might
confound the impact of the gender quota reform, we focus on more
homogeneous treatment and control groups by comparing the
municipalities included in the control group with just their neighboring
9
Data on neighboring municipalities are from Wikipedia: http://it.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Progetto:Amministrazioni/Comuni_italiani/Comuni_limitro.
10
We have also experimented with keeping in the treatment group just those
municipalities that are located in the same Local Labor System (Sistema Locale del
Lavoro) as one of those municipalities included in the control group. Our results (not
reported) remain substantially unchanged.
350 M. De Paola et al. / Journal of Public Economics 94 (2010) 344353

Table 4
Difference-in-differences estimates among neighboring municipalities with interaction NorthSouth.

Percentage of females in

Municipal Council Executive Committee Mayor Municipal Council Executive Committee Mayor

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)

Post Quota 0.084*** 0.074*** 0.019 0.078*** 0.072*** 0.025

(0.007) (0.010) (0.020) (0.007) (0.010) (0.020)
(Post Quota) South 0.021** 0.022* 0.009 0.019** 0.023* 0.015
(0.008) (0.012) (0.022) (0.008) (0.012) (0.023)
Quota Municipality 0.000 0.004 0.047***
(0.005) (0.006) (0.015)
(Quota Municipality) South 0.003 0.002 0.030*
(0.006) (0.008) (0.017)
(Quota Municipality) (Post Quota) 0.012* 0.018* 0.042** 0.014** 0.019* 0.037*
(0.008) (0.011) (0.021) (0.007) (0.011) (0.021)
(Quota Municipality) 0.009 0.015 0.029 0.008 0.010 0.020
(Post Quota) South (0.010) (0.013) (0.024) (0.010) (0.014) (0.025)
Provincial Fixed Effects Yes Yes Yes No No No
Municipal Fixed Effects No No No Yes Yes Yes
Sample 19931995 excluded 19931995 excluded 19931995 excluded 19931995 excluded 19931995 excluded 19931995 excluded
Observations 8635 8634 8629 8635 8634 8629
R-squared 0.245 0.142 0.045 0.220 0.109 0.020
Number of municipalities 2103 2103 2103

Notes: In all regression we include controls for municipal population, population squared, education and employment. Standard errors, corrected for heteroskedasticity and adjusted
for potential clustering at the municipal level, are reported in parentheses. The symbols ***, **, * indicate that coefcients are statistically signicant, respectively, at the 1, 5, and 10%
level.

In Table 4, we replicate the main specications presented in
Table 3. It emerges that in the period since gender quotas were
abolished (after 1995), female representation on Municipal Councils
and Executive Committees has increased less in the South (6.3% as
opposed to 8.4% in the Center-North, see column (1)).11 More
importantly, Center-Northern municipalities directly affected by the
gender quota reform have signicantly increased female representa-
tion in politics with respect to the control group. In this respect,
Southern gender quota municipalities are not statistically and
signicantly different from those located in the North. In fact, the
coefcient on the interaction (Quota Municipality) (Post Quota)
South does not appear statistically signicant, implying that the
reform has led to increased female participation in politics both in
Northern and Southern municipalities. These results hold true both
when we control for provincial (columns (1), (2) and (3)) and for
municipal xed effects (columns (4), (5) and (6)).
Results shown in Tables 3 and 4 are robust to the use of alternative
estimation strategies taking into account the fact that the dependent
variables are proportions (columns (1), (2), (4) and (5)) or are binary
(columns (3) and (6)). Beta regression and Probit estimates conrm
that the gender quota system has increased female participation in
politics.
5.2. Do gender quotas help to eliminate negative stereotypes or give
elected women incumbency advantages?
According to our ndings, the benecial effects of gender quotas
on women's representation in politics have continued over time, even
without reservations becoming a xture of the institutional system.
A possible explanation for this is that afrmative action policies
play a positive role in changing voter cultural attitudes and political
parties' strategies which hinder women's participation in politics.
However, in principle, the observed greater participation of
women in politics could be due to the presence in the political
arena of those women who were elected under the gender quota
11
Northern municipalities show an initially higher female participation than Center
and Southern municipalities (from provincial dummies). The coefcients on Quota
Municipality and Quota Municipality * South are not statistically signicant, showing
that there were no relevant differences between the treated and the control group
both in the North and in the South.
regime and that this has helped them continue their political careers
thanks to an incumbency advantage.
In this sub-section, in order to examine this issue, we exclude all
the members (both males and females) of Municipal Councils and
Executive Committees elected during the gender quota period from
our sample. Therefore, the women elected under the quota regime
who were re-elected after the reform was abolished are not included
in our analysis. By focusing on new entrants, we aim to analyze
whether gender quotas have helped to modify negative stereotypes
against women while neutralizing the effects of incumbency.
As it is possible to see from columns (1) to (2) in Table 5 regarding,
respectively, the fraction of women on Municipal Councils and on
Executive Committees, the interaction term (Quota Municipality)
(Post Quota) has a positive and highly signicant coefcient even
after we exclude the 19931995 incumbents from our sample. This
implies that, in those municipalities that were directly affected by
gender quotas, a larger proportion of successful rst experience
candidates have been women since the repeal of the reservation
system.
As shown in columns (3) and (4) of Table 5, the same results hold
true when we control for municipal xed effects.12
The effect on the election of female candidates as a consequence of
the adoption of the gender quota system turns out to be larger (almost
double) that emerging from estimates considering the full sample.
This larger effect is probably due to the fact that we are now
comparing male and female entrants. Given that incumbents are
mainly males and that incumbency typically gives a great advantage
in elections, when we consider the effect of the gender quota regime
on the full sample of local administrators, the increase in female
participation appears to be smaller because females have to compete
with strong male counterparts. On the other hand, when male and
female incumbents are dropped from our sample, females are
compared with male entrants who are more similar to them in
terms of voter support.
Even though gender quotas seem to have produced relevant
changes in women's representation in politics, these effects may tend
to disappear over time. To analyze this aspect, in columns (5) and (6)
of Table 5, we have estimated two specications of our model in
12
Similarly, if we use the sample of neighboring municipalities and exclude
incumbents, we obtain similar results.
 M. De Paola et al. / Journal of Public Economics 94 (2010) 344353 351

Table 5
Difference-in-differences estimates of the inuence of gender quota on negative stereotypes against women. Incumbents elected between 1993 and 1995 are excluded.

Percentage of females

Municipal Council Executive Committee Municipal Council Executive Committee Municipal Council Executive Committee

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)

Post Quota 0.071*** 0.063*** 0.063*** 0.054***

(0.005) (0.007) (0.005) (0.007)
Quota Municipality 0.001 0.005 0.012*** 0.015***
(0.003) (0.004) (0.004) (0.005)
(Quota Municipality) (Post Quota) 0.031*** 0.039*** 0.033*** 0.043***
(0.005) (0.007) (0.004) (0.007)
Years 19962000 0.055*** 0.040***
(0.006) (0.008)
Years 20012007 0.061*** 0.058***
(0.006) (0.008)
(Years 19962000) 0.028*** 0.026***
(Quota Municipality) (0.006) (0.008)
(Years 20012007) 0.023*** 0.022***
(Quota Municipality) (0.006) (0.008)
Provincial Fixed Effects Yes Yes No No Yes Yes
Municipal Fixed Effects No No Yes Yes No No
Sample 19931995 excluded 19931995 excluded 19931995 excluded 19931995 excluded 19931995 excluded 19931995 excluded
Observations 31,485 29,808 31,485 29,808 31,990 31,987
R-squared 0.234 0.095 0.234 0.092 0.234 0.120
Number of municipalities 8080 8075

Notes: In all regressions we include controls for municipal population, population squared, education and employment. Standard errors, corrected for heteroskedasticity and
adjusted for potential clustering at the municipal level, are reported in brackets. The symbols ***, **, * indicate that coefcients are statistically signicant, respectively, at the 1, 5, and
10% level.

which we include two dummy variables, one for the period 1996
2000, immediately after the reform was abolished, and one for the
period 20012007, and we interact these two dummies with Quota
Municipality.13 Results show that in both periods municipalities
affected by gender quotas achieved a larger female political
representation (23 percentage points more). Even though the
coefcient on the interaction with the period 19962000 is slightly
higher than the 20012007 coefcient, we are not able to reject the
null hypothesis of equality of the two coefcients (p-value = 0.39 and
p-value = 0.70 for coefcients, respectively, in columns (5) and (6)).14
5.3. Some evidence on the existence of a voter bias against women
It would be interesting to understand whether gender quotas have
increased women's involvement in the Italian political arena by
changing female reluctance with regards to taking part in political
activity (e.g. by modifying what is perceived as being an appropriate
role for women), by weakening the opposition of male-dominated
parties to female candidacies or by reducing voters' anti-female bias.
To investigate these aspects, it would be necessary to have data on
candidatures, which would allow us, for example, to analyze the effect
of the gender quota on the proportion of female candidates who were
elected. Unfortunately, there are no data in Italy providing informa-
tion on candidates who stand for seats on Municipal Councils.
From the Italian Ministry of Internal Affairs, it has only been
possible to gather data on candidates for mayor, and only for the
period 19932006. These data have been used to verify how in-
dividual characteristics of candidates affect their probability of being
elected as mayor. In particular, we examine the existence of a voter
bias against women, i.e. whether a male advantage exists in mayor
elections and how it has been affected by gender quotas.
13
In this analysis, we cannot use year dummies since, in many years, only a small
number of municipalities voted.
14
As a further robustness check, we have estimated a number of placebo regressions
using data for periods prior to the reform. The coefcient on the interaction term is
never statistically signicant.
To make the interpretation of results easier, we restrict our
analysis to just those elections in which two candidates compete.
Following Frechette et al. (2008), we have built a variable, Male
Advantage, which takes a value of +1 if a male has a female opponent,
zero if the two candidates are of the same gender, and 1 if a female
has a male opponent.
We have regressed, in turn, the probability of being elected as a
mayor and the percentage of votes obtained by each candidate on
Male Advantage, controlling for age and education differences between
opponents, for whether a candidate is an incumbent, for municipal
characteristics and provincial dummies.
Estimations are reported in Table 6. We nd a marked and
statistically signicant Male Advantage. Ceteris paribus, the probabil-
ity of being elected as mayor is 7.6 percentage points higher if a
candidate is a male and his opponent is a female (column (1)), while
the percentage of votes is 2.1 points higher (column (2)). It is worth
noting that this effect is not due to differences between male and
female candidates in observable characteristics, such as incumbency,
education or age, which we control for.15
In columns (3) and (4) we analyze whether the magnitude of Male
Advantage is different between municipalities affected and those not
affected by gender quotas. With this aim, we have interacted the
dummy Quota Municipality with Male Advantage. Results show that
the Male Advantage is much lower in gender quota municipalities,
nearly 10 percentage points less with regards the probability of
becoming mayor and about 5 percentage points less in terms of votes
received.
This is an interesting result, but only suggestive, since, unfortunately,
we have no information on candidatures in elections before the
introduction of gender quotas. As a consequence, we are not able to
compare treatment and control groups before and after treatment and
so we cannot be sure that gender quotas have reduced voters' bias
against women (for example, the result could be driven by predeter-
mined unobservable features).
15
As expected, being incumbent or having higher levels of education greatly increase
the probability of being elected and the percentage of votes obtained.
352 M. De Paola et al. / Journal of Public Economics 94 (2010) 344353

Table 6 In addition, since the adoption of statutory gender quotas in Italy

The existence of a Male Advantage in Mayoral elections. OLS regressions. was only temporary, we are able to analyze whether their effects
(1) (2) (3) (4) persist over time. The results of our estimates show that even after
gender quotas were abolished, the municipalities affected by the
Mayor Percentage of Mayor Percentage of
votes votes reform continued to return a signicantly higher female political
representation than municipalities in the control group.
Male Advantage 0.076*** 0.021*** 0.179*** 0.069***
(0.014) (0.004) (0.061) (0.019) These ndings are robust to different denitions of the treatment
Male Advantage 0.108* 0.051*** group, including just neighboring municipalities, and are not driven
(Quota Municipality) (0.063) (0.019) by different temporal trends in women's involvement between
Quota Municipality 0.011 0.002 0.012 0.002 Southern and Northern Italian municipalities.
(0.008) (0.002) (0.008) (0.002)
Incumbent 0.298*** 0.104*** 0.298*** 0.104***
The claim that gender quotas help in eliminating negative
(0.007) (0.002) (0.007) (0.002) stereotypes is also supported by the fact that, since the repeal of the
Education (years) 0.005*** 0.002*** 0.004*** 0.002*** reservation system, gender quota municipalities have continued to
(0.001) (0.000) (0.001) (0.000) elect a larger proportion of women from among entrant candidates. In
Age 0.002*** 0.000*** 0.002*** 0.000***
fact, the observed greater participation of women in politics does not
(0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000)
Opponent's education 0.007*** 0.002*** 0.007*** 0.002*** seem to be related to the presence in the political arena of those
(0.001) (0.000) (0.001) (0.000) women who were elected under the gender quotas, but to a higher
Opponent's age 0.000* 0.000 0.000* 0.000 propensity of parties to present female candidates and to a higher
(0.000) (0.000) (0.000) (0.000) propensity of voters to support them.
Opponent's incumbency 0.268*** 0.094*** 0.268*** 0.094***
(0.007) (0.002) (0.007) (0.002)
Our ndings are in line with those which emerge from Beaman et al.
Constant 0.522*** 0.475*** 0.524*** 0.475*** (2008) and Bhavnani (2009) showing that exposure to female leaders
(0.040) (0.012) (0.040) (0.012) weakens negative stereotypes regarding women.
Observations 15,419 15,419 15,419 15,419 Unfortunately, from the data at hand, we are not able to identify what
R-squared 0.196 0.246 0.196 0.247
type of discrimination has been overcome as a result of gender quotas.
Notes: In all regressions we include controls for municipal population, population It may be that gender quotas have increased female representation
squared, education, employment and provincial dummies. Standard errors, corrected in that they have contributed to reducing voters' bias against women,
for heteroskedasticity and adjusted for potential clustering at municipal level, are
reported in brackets. The symbols ***, **, * indicate that coefcients are statistically
that they have helped overcome traditional ideas of gender roles and
signicant, respectively, at the 1, 5, and 10% level. encouraged women to stand as candidates or that political parties,
having seen female success with voters, have become more inclined to
include them in their lists.
6. Concluding remarks As an attempt to understand this aspect better, we have used data
regarding candidatures for mayor in the period 19932006. From our
The number of women actively involved in politics is quite small in analysis, it emerges that mayoral elections show a voter bias against
most countries and is growing slowly over time. In Italy, female women, but that this bias was lower in gender quota municipalities.
representation in national and local political institutions has always However, these results, due to a lack of suitable pre and post
been well below the level reached by most other European countries. treatment data, are only suggestive and we are not able to disentangle
In recent years, a large number of countries have introduced gender a causal relationship. A better understanding of the role played by
quotas into electoral rules with the aim of overcoming barriers such different types of stereotypes in hampering female participation in
as the existence of male-dominated political parties which oppose the politics and how they may be changed through afrmative action is
presence of female candidates in their lists or the existence of an anti- crucial for appropriate policy interventions and is a task for future
female bias among voters which hinder the entrance of women into research.
the political arena. It is also worth noting that our results pertain to the success of
However, little is known about the effective impact that these women in municipal-level elections and may not hold true for national
policies have on women's participation and success in politics and, in elections. On the other hand, it is a fact that the career of many poli-
particular, on whether gender quotas help in eliminating anti-female ticians starts at the local level.
bias among political parties and voters. The main difculty in the
empirical analysis lies in disentangling the effects of the intervention Acknowledgement
from other confounding factors which relate to temporal trends.
Moreover, if gender quotas are permanently adopted by a country, it We would like to thank two anonymous referees, Giorgio Brunello,
will be hard to understand whether changes are directly due to the Andrea Ichino, Laura Pagani, Alessandro Petretto, Michela Ponzo,
enforcement of the electoral rules or to a change in social and cultural Valeria Pupo, Luca Stanca, Carmine Trecroci and seminar participants
attitudes. at the University of Brescia, the Universit Cattolica (Milan), the 2009
In this paper, we have been able to overcome these thorny SIE Conference, the EALE Conference and the Brucchi Luchino
empirical problems and to identify gender quota effects thanks to a Conference for useful comments and suggestions. The usual dis-
natural experiment which occurred in the form of the introduction, in claimers apply.
Italy in 1993, of a law establishing statutory gender quotas for
elections to Municipal Councils which required a minimum number of
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