Do Women Politicians Know More about Women’s Policy Preferences? Evidence from Canada

This study draws together theories of women’s substantive representation and research on politicians’ knowledge of constituent preferences. We ask whether politicians are better at predicting their constituents’ policy preferences when they share the same gender. In doing so, we contribute to knowledge about the mechanisms underlying substantive representation. Using original surveys of 3,750 Canadians and 867 elected politicians, we test whether politicians correctly perceive gender gaps in their constituents’ policy preferences and whether women politicians are better at correctly identifying the policy preferences of women constituents. Contrary to expectations from previous research, we do not find elected women to be better at predicting the preferences of women constituents. Instead, we find that all politicians — regardless of their gender — perform better when predicting women’s policy preferences and worse when predicting men’s preferences. The gender of the constituent matters more than the gender of the politician.