Magda Hinojosa (PI: 50%), Kim Fridkin, (co-PI: 20%), Miki Caul Kittilson, (co-PI: 20%), Mary Margaret Fonow, (co-PI: 10%). “The Dynamics of Political Representation: Examining Descriptive, Substantive, and Symbolic Representation with a Natural Experiment” (National Science Foundation grant under review, $631,759).
Click here to read the one page project summary.
Magda Hinojosa and Sarah Shair-Rosenfield. “Reducing Barriers to Female Representation: Evidence from Chile of a Positive Incumbency Advantage” (Article under review).
The women and politics literature has often considered the incumbency advantage to be an impediment to female political representation, but can female incumbency provide a signal to parties and voters that eliminates or reduces gender bias? We argue that once women prove they can win elections parties will revise their strategic evaluations of their value as candidates. We test this using an original dataset of all Chilean elections (national and municipal) since the return to democracy in 1989. We use a Heckman selection model to assess re-election rates by incumbent candidate gender, conditional on the re-nomination of incumbents. We find that female incumbents are just as likely, and in some cases more likely, to be re-nominated as their male counterparts, and that female incumbents are just as likely to be re-elected as men. Our analysis demonstrates that incumbency can positively affect female political representation.
Magda Hinojosa, Jill Carle, and Gina Woodall. “Speaking as a Woman: Descriptive Presentation and Representation in Costa Rica’s Legislative Assembly” (Article under review).
Using a content analysis of all floor speeches from 2001-2007, we systematically analyze how female and male legislators in the Costa Rican Legislative Assembly descriptively represent their constituents. Female legislators can descriptively represent women by “speaking as” women, i.e. by using words or phrases that invoke their own gender. We refer to this form of descriptive representation as descriptive presentation. We find significant differences in how men and women and representatives of parties of the left and right undertake descriptive presentation. Additionally, we find that female legislators “speak as” women even when they are not discussing women’s issues.