An impact assessment of measures for gender rebalancing in local elective assemblies

The general objective of the paper is to present the results of an evaluation of the effects produced by the regulatory measures introduced in recent years for the purposes of gender rebalancing in the elective offices. Women still encounter huge difficulties in being included in political decision-making. Even when they have the chance of participating to political competition as candidates, this is not a guarantee that they are elected and assigned to important political positions. Many countries have introduced rules and mechanisms to accelerate the rebalancing process. The general feeling is that their effectiveness may vary a lot, because they need to be well designed and effectively implemented to achieve good results, so asking an important evaluation question. Different types of mechanisms may be designed to ensure gender balance in politics. The main options adopted are: Gender shares in the lists of candidates; Double/triple gender preference; Alternate list. The three mechanisms can be paired, and their effectiveness depends also on their application with different voting regulation. We start from a statistical recognition of gender shares among candidates and elected representatives for all institutions in Italy. The impact evaluation is limited to the case of municipalities. In the other cases, the lack of a credible counterfactual forces us to limit to statistical analysis of observed change. In the depicted situation, the voting regulation for the administrative elections is a perfect context where to evaluate the effectiveness of gender rebalancing mechanisms. The paper presents the results of an evaluation based on RDD approach around the two thresholds present in the law (5.000 and 15.000 inhabitants). Moreover, the determinants of the impact are analysed, based on variables that affect women participation in electoral competition.