Gender Bias in Policy Representation in Post-Conflict Societies

• Author: Daniel M. Butler,Margit Tavits,Dino Hadzic
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10659129211045020
• Published date: 01 March 2023
• Date: 01 March 2023

Article

Political Research Quarterly

2023, Vol. 76(1) 200–212

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/10659129211045020

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Gender Bias in Policy Representation in

Post-Conf‌lict Societies

Daniel M. Butler

1

, Margit Tavits

1

, and Dino Hadzic

2



Abstract

Do politicians represent the policy preferences of men and women equally post-war? Gender inclusiveness has par-

ticularly high stakes in this context: research shows that it can help sustain peace. We use a series of survey experiments

with politicians (N= 1389) and voters (N= 3049) to study gender bias in policy representation in a post-conf‌lict setting:

Bosnia. We f‌ind a signif‌icant pro-male bias in the policy responsiveness of local politicians (both men and women) to their

constituency preferences. We do not f‌ind evidence that this is because men are more active and vocal about expressing

their policy preferences. Instead, this bias is present in the post-war society mo re generally: politicians’attitudes ref‌lect

the pro-male bias among voters, both men and women. These results have important implications for the study of gender

and post-conf‌lict politics.

Keywords

conf‌lict, representation, gender, Bosnia, survey experiment

Introduction

Do political elites in post-conf‌lict countries represent the

policy preferences of men and women equally? Recent

studies show that politicians do not equally represent all

groups of voters, but tend to disproportionally represent

the policy preferences of the highly educated, aff‌luent,

politically active, and white voters (Adams and Ezrow

2009;Enns and Wlezien 2011;Griff‌in and Newman

2005). Other work has demonstrated racial and ethnic

bias in policy representation (Broockman 2013;Butler

and Broockman 2011). Prior research also shows that a

politician’s gender inf‌luences their policy agendas (e.g.,

Brollo and Troiano 2016;Chattopadhyay and Duf‌lo 2004;

Schwindt-Bayer 2006), that politicians (particularly men)

tend to be more responsive to the policy preferences of

their co-gender voters (Clayton et al. 2019;Kim and

Michelitch 2019), and that the policy preferences of

male voters are generally getting more attention from

politicians and parties (Griff‌in, Newman, and Wolbrecht

2012;Homola 2019).

We build on this literature and explore gender bias in

policy representation in a post-conf‌lict society. We focus

on a post-conf‌lict setting because research shows that

gender equality in politics has particularly high payoffs in

societies emerging from violent conf‌lict. Most notably,

post-war peace becomes more sustainable when women’s

preferences and perspectives are included in the political

decision-making (e.g., Shair-Rosenf‌ield and Wood 2017;

see also Demeritt et al. 2015;Hudson et al. 2009;Koch

and Fulton 2011). Thus, the payoff to identifying gender

bias in post-conf‌lict settings is particularly high.

In studying gender bias, we focus on how much leg-

islators and voters defer to the preferences of men versus

women when choosing what policies to support. While

prior research shows that women enter more public roles

in wartime (Goldin 1991;Wood 2008) and become more

politically active post-war (Tripp 2015), we know rela-

tively little about the extent to which policy representation

in those societies is gender inclusive. Indeed, some re-

search on gender quotas concludes that simply increasing

the number of women serving in off‌ice does not neces-

sarily lead to policy outcomes that are more representative

of women’s interests and preferences (e.g., Krook 2016).

Tog et at more substantive outcomes, we estimate the level

1

Washington University in St. Louis, St Louis, MO, USA

2

Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

Corresponding Author:

Daniel M. Butler, Department of Political Science, Washington

University in St. Louis, 1 Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO 63130, USA.

Email: daniel.butler@gmail.com