Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 September 2020
Do elites exhibit gender bias when responding to political aspirants? Drawing on theories of gender bias, group attachment, and partisan identity, I conduct the first audit experiment outside the United States to examine the presence of gender bias in the earliest phases of the political recruitment process. Based on responses from 1,774 Canadian legislators, I find evidence of an overall gender bias in favor of female political aspirants. Specifically, legislators are more responsive to female political aspirants and more likely to provide them with helpful advice when they ask how to get involved in politics. This pro-women bias, which exists at all levels of government, is stronger among female legislators and those associated with left-leaning parties. These results suggest that political elites in Canada are open to increasing female political representation and thus should serve as welcome encouragement for women to pursue their political ambitions.
I thank Charles Crabtree, Benjamin Ferland, Sarah Fulton, Matt Golder, Sona Golder, Diana O'Brien, Michelle Taylor-Robinson, and participants at the 2019 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association and the 2019 European Conference on Politics and Gender for their helpful comments on this article. I also thank the editor and reviewers for their constructive comments. The audit experiment described in this article received Institutional Review Board approval (Study #068067) at Texas A&M University and was preregistered at Evidence in Governance and Politics (Study #20180120AA). The data and all computer code necessary to replicate the results and figures in this analysis will be made available online at http://kdhima.com upon publication. Stata 14 was the statistical package used in this study.