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STOCKHOLM SCHOOL
OF ECONOMICS

SITE Seminar | Under pressure: Electoral competition and women's representation

Join us for the next SITE Seminar! On November 3, 2025, we are joined by Pamela Campa (SITE). How can women's representation rise without quotas? Campa presents new evidence from Turkish municipal elections on how competition can reshape who parties put on the ballot.
Starttid: 2025-11-03 at 12:30
Sluttid: 2025-11-03 at 13:30
Tidszon: CET
Plats: At SSE and online via Zoom

Working paper title: Under Pressure: Electoral Competition and Women's Representation

By: Pamela Campa, Perihan Saygin & Semih Tumen

Abstract

How can women's representation improve in countries without legislated gender quotas? We study municipal elections in Turkey from 2009 to 2019. A conservative dominant party, Erdogan's AKP, is often challenged by a Kurdish party that promotes gender equality in electoral lists. Exploiting within-municipality variation, we find that when the Kurdish party wins, AKP increases its share of female candidates by 25–30% in the next election. Wins by other opposition parties have substantially smaller impacts. These results suggest that one party empowering women can help reduce gender gaps in electoral lists more broadly.

Read the full paper to learn more >>

About the speaker

Pamela Campa is an Associate Professor of Economics at the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE), part of the Stockholm School of Economics.

Campa specializes in political economy, environmental economics, and gender economics, and holds a PhD in Economics from the Institute for International Economic Studies (IIES) at Stockholm University. Prior to her current role, she was an Assistant Professor at the University of Calgary.​

Her research spans topics such as electoral gender quotas, environmental violations and justice, gender gaps in employment, and cooperation in the US Congress. She is also affiliated with the CEPR, the Mistra Center for Sustainable Markets (MISUM), and the Dondena Gender Initiative, and is an invited researcher at J-PAL Europe.

Learn more about the speaker >>

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SITE Seminar Brown bag