Procedural Barriers to Political Candidacy: Gender, Discouragement, and Candidate Persistence

A procedural rule in Indian elections requires candidates to pay a nominal deposit, which is forfeited on obtaining fewer than one-sixth of the votes. Forfeiture diminishes female recontesting by 13.3 percentage points (pp) in the following election (relative effect size of 68%). We find no such effects for men. These effects are persistent and discourage female candidates in the long term as well. States with more regressive gender norms exhibit stronger findings, with female forfeiters also being 11.8 pp less likely to win the following election. We enhance our analysis by conducting a survey experiment with representative voters.