Women are often considered more risk averse than men, but is this also true for politicians? Based on a study of candidates in the Portuguese election, Pedro C. Magalhaes and Miguel M. Pereira When women run for office, they are found to be much more willing to take risks than men.
Many studies have consistently shown that women are more at risk than men. These strong findings in the general population have been extended to studies of elected officials.
Political scientists have suggested that gender differences in risk aversion may explain politicians’ propensity to engage in corruption, disagreement in the legislature, and differences in government stability or foreign policy. Risk aversion is also associated with decision-making biases, which have important implications for policymaking.
However, this claim relies on an untested assumption: that female politicians are more risk averse than men. There is reason to suspect that this may not be true. Gender differences in risk profiles are contextual. For example, women have been shown to be more willing to take risks in management and other contexts that are characterized by extreme competitiveness and, perhaps more importantly, greater insularity for women.
Politics may be no different. Even in places where male supremacy is less overt, women are still held to different criteria and are selected based on different criteria, making them more selective in choosing whether to run for office. But to our knowledge, no study has directly elicited risk preferences among political candidates. In a recent article, we surveyed 348 candidates running in the Portuguese general election to find out just that.
Higher risk tolerance
In the survey, we asked the candidates to decide how much of a hypothetical €100,000 prize they would invest in a risky financial opportunity. They were told that they could double their money or lose some of it, and that the highest rewards would entail the highest risks. We also randomly assigned the subjects to either a private or public investment scenario to investigate whether the risk profile differed depending on whether the stakes were related to public resources rather than private resources.
Our findings contradict the common belief that women are more risk averse than men. In fact, the opposite is true among candidates for public office in Portugal. Female candidates were 15.4 percentage points less likely to choose the safest investment option and invest more money than men.
Interestingly, these gender differences were most pronounced in public investment scenarios, with female candidates being more risk-averse than men when managing public funds, which runs counter to the notion that women are inherently prudent political decision-makers.
Potential explanations
Why might female candidates take more risks than their male peers? We propose two mechanisms, potentially working together. First, women who choose to run for office and overcome the obstacles imposed by a male-dominated environment may constitute a unique, risk-tolerant subgroup. Second, women who enter politics may adapt to the dominant professional norms of the profession.
We found that gender differences in risk aversion were unaffected by political experience or incumbent office. Female candidates were consistently less risk averse than men, regardless of whether they were new or seasoned politicians. This suggests that the differences we found may be attributable to deeper gender dynamics that govern both selection and partisan gatekeeping in the political profession.
Meaning for politics
Of course, these findings have their own limitations. They were made using a fictitious instrument that focused only on fiscal issues in a specific Western European democracy. However, if replicated in further studies, they have important implications.
Meanwhile, the results highlight the importance of studying gender differences in elite contexts: the dynamics that shape risk behavior in the general population may not apply in the same way to those seeking political office, especially women.
On the other hand, our research provides insight into how we might think about gender equality in politics. The assumption that women in politics are more risk-averse than men, and the inferences based on this assumption, need to be re-evaluated. As more women enter politics, it will be important to continue to explore how gender shapes who enters office and their risk profiles.
For more details, see the author’s companion article. Political Journal
Note: This article presents the views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the position of EUROPP (European Politics and Policy) or the London School of Economics. Source of featured image: Chugulyev / Shutterstock.com
