(Page 9 of 20) - Gender Imbalance in Representative Democracy: Women Candidates and Councillors in English Local Government, 1973-2001 authored by Borisyuk, Galina. and Thrasher, Michael.

which they are the challenger and second, whether or not they are challenging an incumbent or
fighting an open seat. In order to test whether women challengers are only provided opportunities to
fight the more difficult seats we selected all cases where district magnitude is one and then divided
seats into two categories with percentage majorities of first party over second party at the previous
election above or below 20%. Although this figure may appear somewhat high it is not in the local
government context where swings in electoral fortune are more common than in, for example,
parliamentary elections. We also controlled for female candidates standing for parties that were
attempting to remove an incumbent party from office.

The null hypothesis, that there is no difference in the proportion of women challengers contesting in
marginal and safer seats, is rejected by our data. In the case of the metropolitan boroughs a
comparison of means using the t-test statistic gave a p value of < .05. In seats with majorities of 20%
and under, the mean percentage of rival women challengers was 21.7%. This compares with 25.6%
in safer seats with majorities for the incumbent party of above 20%. A similar analysis of the two types
of shire district elections tells the same story, although the difference in means is not as pronounced,
though still statistically significant. In authorities with partial council elections, women candidates
comprised 24.5% of the candidates in more marginal seats but 26.4% in safer seats. Shire districts
holding whole council elections saw a mean of 29.0% in marginal seats, compared with 31.4% in
seats with larger majorities (p value .039).

But this analysis considers only party incumbency – it does not take account of personal incumbency.
Accordingly, we sub-divided our data into a further category that took account of whether the
candidate for the defending party was an incumbent or not. Was it the case that women candidates
were more likely to be found in seats where it was not merely a case of defeating the incumbent party
but overcoming any personal vote for a sitting councillor?

In open seats in the metropolitan boroughs there was a mean of 20.2% for women candidates in more
marginal seats, compared with 23.8% for the remainder. Where an incumbent stood the percentage
of women challengers was 22.6% in the more winnable seats and 26.5% in safer seats. Since all
observations are statistically significant, we can conclude that in the metropolitan boroughs, women
candidates are more likely to be found campaigning in difficult seats and confronting incumbents. Of
course, we have no evidence that would determine whether this is the result of a systematic bias
against women candidates or that women challengers voice a personal preference for contesting
seats where they have little chance of success.

Turning to the shire districts we find a slightly different picture. In areas that use election by thirds for
open seats there is a noticeable difference in means. While women comprise 21.9% of challengers in
marginal seats there is a mean of 24.6% in safer seats (p value < .05). However, in seats with an
incumbent seeking re-election there is only a half a percentage point difference in the two types of
seats and a p value of .476. By contrast, in the shires that elect the council en bloc there is no
statistically significant difference in the means (p=0.91) as far as open seats are concerned but there
are differences when incumbents seek re-election. Women comprise 30.5% of challengers to
incumbents defending majorities of 20% and below but 34.7% of candidates in safer seats (p value
0.12). As yet, we have no satisfactory explanation for why the position in the metropolitan boroughs
should be so clear and why, even within the shire districts, the patterns are different.

Previous research has shown that women candidates tend to cluster in that when one party selects a
woman candidate its rivals may also follow suit. We found clear evidence that this was also the case
for patterns of contestation in English local government. Cases were selected when district magnitude
is equal to one and candidates stood for at least the three main parties, Conservative, Labour and
Liberal Democrat. We identified a sufficient number of cases for analysis in the metropolitan boroughs
as well as the shire county and district level elections.

Table 2 shows that there appears to be a contagion effect. In the metropolitan boroughs even when,
for example, there was no female Labour candidate then the chance that the Conservatives fielded a
woman candidate was higher when the Liberal Democrats also presented local voters with a choice of
female candidate (29.6% against 23.1%). When Labour did find a female candidate then once again it
was more likely that the Conservatives would complete the all-female slate of candidates if Liberal
Democrats had done the same (32.3% against 29.6%). Overall, using the Labour candidate’s gender
as a starting point, when that party’s candidate is female then we would expect there to be an