What Happens When Women Win Elections? The Electoral Returns to Increased Representation of Women

How does the election of a woman shape the electoral performance of their party? Research suggeststhat electing women to political office shapes party behavior and improves voters’ perception of the party.However, the downstream electoral consequences of electing women to office remain understudied. Draw-ing on administrative data and closely contested municipal elections in Denmark from 1997 to 2017, wefind that marginally electing a woman over a man improves the electoral performance of the entire partyin the succeeding election. We propose three mechanism that can produce these findings: the competence,legitimacy, and party coherence mechanisms. We find evidence partly consistent with the latter two mech-anisms, but little to support the first one. This suggests that electing women changes the functioning ofthe party’s elected delegation. These findings offer insights into the role of women in politics and promptfurther inquiry into gender representation in elected offices.