Search results

AbstractDo elites exhibit gender bias when responding to political aspirants? Drawing on theories of gender bias, group attachment, and partisan identity, I conduct the first audit experiment outside the United States to examine the presence of gender bias in the earliest phases of the political recruitment process. Based on responses from 1,774 Canadian legislators, I find evidence of an overall gender bias in favor of female political aspirants. Specifically, legislators are more responsive to female political aspirants and more likely to provide them with helpful advice when they ask how to get involved in politics. This pro-women bias, which exists at all levels of government, is stronger among female legislators and those associated with left-leaning parties. These results suggest that political elites in Canada are open to increasing female political representation and thus should serve as welcome encouragement for women to pursue their political ambitions.

The audit study design offers researchers a powerful tool to measure discrimination. Yet ethical concerns surround the use of this design. In this article, we introduce a cost–benefit framework that researchers should consider when conducting audit studies. One key insight of this framework is that when researchers evaluate audit studies due to ethical concerns, they must also evaluate the relative benefits of studying discrimination through other means. Building on this framework, we provide a set of practical recommendations that researchers can adopt to (1) minimize costs (i.e. ethical harm) and (2) maximize benefits (i.e. quality of their research). We hope that our suggestions contribute to the ongoing, important discussion about ethical issues involving audit studies and generate better work on discrimination.

AbstractWhat is the relationship between religion and human development? Using data from the pooled 1981–2014 World and European Values Surveys, we examine the effect of human development on a country's level of religious attendance and belief. Consistent with the idea that the primary causal mechanism underlying secularization theory has to do with the substitutability of secular and religious goods, we find that human development has a negative effect on religious attendance but no effect on religious belief. Our results indicate that as societies develop, we should not be surprised if religious belief remains high even as religious attendance declines. The negative effect of human development on religious attendance is driven primarily by a country's level of education and health. Our analysis suggests that it is important to think carefully about what one's theoretical model of the secularization process implies for different aspects of religion.