When women take all: Direct election and female leadership

This paper investigates how direct election regimes ( à la presidential democracy) affect the gender composition of political leaders compared to indirect appointment regimes ( à la parliamentary democracy). I study a 1993 reform that replaced mayoral appointment by councilors with direct election of mayors by popular vote in Italian municipalities. Exploiting the staggered adoption of the reform across municipalities between 1993 and 1997, I find that direct election raises the probability that a municipality is led by a woman by about 2.5 percentage points, from a pre-reform baseline of 3.5 percent to approximately 6 percent. The effect is stronger in municipalities with a greater pre-reform female representation in municipal councils and is driven by more educated officials replacing less-educated incumbents.