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Can women's performance in elections determine the engagement of adolescent girls in politics?

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  • Arvate, Paulo
  • Firpo, Sergio
  • Pieri, Renan

Abstract

Women are responsible for important results in the public sector, but their participation as politicians is still small. One possible way of correcting this situation in the future will be to increase the degree to which adolescent girls participate in politics. The literature about women's empowerment has identified that adolescent girls participate more in politics when role model women are elected. Unlike this literature, however, we run a regression discontinuity design and we show that the defeat of a woman also leads to other women being discouraged from participating. Our main idea is that the performance of female politicians has an influence on the engagement in politics of adolescent girls. Our measure of this engagement is not generated by measuring the perception of the aspirations of adolescent girls, but is taken from net registration to vote between Brazilian municipalities with victorious and defeated female leaders (mayors). Two mechanisms are important for explaining our results: the exchange of experiences between adolescent girls of different ages, and informal (through the Internet and public Wi-Fi) and formal (through the municipal anti-discrimination program) information.

Suggested Citation

  • Arvate, Paulo & Firpo, Sergio & Pieri, Renan, 2021. "Can women's performance in elections determine the engagement of adolescent girls in politics?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:poleco:v:70:y:2021:i:c:s0176268021000458
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2021.102045
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    Cited by:

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    2. Bruce, Raphael & Cavgias, Alexsandros & Meloni, Luis & Remígio, Mário, 2022. "Under pressure: Women’s leadership during the COVID-19 crisis," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Role model woman; Empowerment; Electoral performance; Engagement; Exchange of experiences; Information;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination

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