Breaking the Glass Ceiling in Chile: The Effect of Gender Quotas and No Incumbency on Campaign Spending and Electoral Results in Constitutional Convention Elections

Stereotypes against women and the advantage of incumbent male candidates make balancing political gender representation a formidable task. Gender and incumbency play critical roles in both fundraising and the electoral process, contributing to this gender disadvantage—a facet of the so‐called “glass ceiling” also present in other spheres of the social structure. We study the 2021 Chilean Constitutional Convention election, a process that had no incumbency effects and which enforcing both entrance and exit parity, facilitating the shattering of this glass ceiling. Estimations from a modified 2‐stage least squares model using data from the Chilean electoral college show that strong parity rules and the absence of incumbency are indeed effective ways to counteract stereotypes and promote gender parity not only in the election they were designed for but also in subsequent elections.