Still not There?-Structural Gender Inequality in the German Bundestag

Despite formal equality, women are still underrepresented in the German Bundestag. Research findings suggest that institutional factors contribute decisively to structural discrimination against women in politics. Majority voting systems and right-wing parties, in particular, lead to low proportions of women in legislatures worldwide as well as in Germany. In light of the upcoming electoral reform of the Bundestag-whose mandate is also to achieve an "equal representation of women and men on candidate lists and in the Bundestag"-the study examines which structural factors have influenced women's electoral chances in elections of the Bundestag. Special focus is put on the effects of the electoral system and the ideological party orientation. The data set used includes candidates in federal elections from 1953 to 2017 and thus allows individual-level analyses that also take into account the study of nomination quality-i.e., the individual chances of success of a candidacy. The results of the paper show that not only the mechanism of majority voting but also the quality of the nomination and the party affiliation of the candidates influence the electoral chances of women and thus can be factors for increasing the share of women in the Bundestag in the long term.