Dear Meryl
Would you mind forwarding to the women and politics group in case anyone would like to come?
Thanks
Rosie x

Dr Rosie Campbell
Reader in Politics
Assistant Dean for Postgraduate Research School of Social Sciences, History and Philosophy
Department of Politics
Birkbeck, University of London
Malet Street, Bloomsbury
London
WC1E 7HX

Tel: 020 7631 6785
Twitter: @Rosiecampb

http://parliamentarycandidates.org


Dear Colleagues
Mona Morgan-Collins, Fellow at LSE, Department of Government, will be presenting a paper entitled "The Confessional, the International, or Loyalty? An Examination of Partisan Performance after Women's Enfranchisement" (co-authored with Dawn L. Teele), to the Birkbeck Gender and British Politics group on the 14th of December. All are welcome please contact [log in to unmask] if you'd like to come along.


Date: Monday 14 December 2015, 1-2:30pm

Location: Department of Politics, Birkbeck, 10 Gower Street WC1E 6DP; Paul Hirst seminar room

Abstract:

While a vast literature examines why women were given the right to vote, much less is known about how the introduction of female voters changed the constellations of political power and partisanship around the world. In this paper we formulate three hypotheses that link female political preferences to electoral outcomes: first is the 'conventional-wisdom' that conditional on cultural norms and economic development, women historically supported conservative parties; second, that because women preferred welfare policies, they voted for parties with redistributive agendas; or third, that female voters were loyal to the party that secured their political emancipation.

Analysing a sample of 15 countries, we adjudicate between these hypotheses by exploiting the variation in the change of the size of the electorate after enfranchisement and apply a difference in difference approach. We find that parties that extended voting rights to women without complementary programmatic policies were not rewarded with loyalty. Neither women historically voted for conservative parties. Instead, women's distinct set of largely pro-welfare preferences consistently determined their voting preferences for parties with redistributive agendas.

Best wishes
Rosie