Abstract
While gender quota and parity laws are increasingly popular worldwide, their introduction often causes controversy. Thus far, we lack an understanding of how the framing of these measures affects public opinion. We conducted a survey experiment in the UK and France (combined N = 2677) to identify the causal effect of framing on levels of support for the policy and potential backlash against women candidates. Comparing (1) gender quotas to increase women’s underrepresentation and (2) gender parity laws to achieve gender balance, we find that overall levels of support are greater than opposition in both countries. Parity is more supported than quotas in France, but no such framing effects emerge in the UK. Respondents’ gender also matters, with men less supportive of both measures than women. We find no evidence that either type of positive action measure increases backlash in the form of reduced support for hypothetical women candidates running under such measures.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Journal | Journal of European Public Policy |
| Early online date | 16 Sept 2024 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | E-pub ahead of print - 16 Sept 2024 |
Acknowledgements
We thank Christopher Wratil, Diana O’Brien, Jonthan Slapin, and participants at the European Political Science Association annual meeting 2021, Lund University’s 2023 Workshop on Gender Dynamics in Politics, the Workplace, and Society, and the Workshop on Political Representation at the University of Zurich 2023 for helpful comments on previous versions of this paper. The authors would also like to thank the reviewers and editors for the useful feedback.Keywords
- Positive action measures
- framing
- gender
- parity laws
- public opinion
- quotas
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Sociology and Political Science
- Public Administration
- Political Science and International Relations
