Women and the Italian general election of 2018: selection, constraints and resources in the definition of candidate profiles

Based on public databases hosted by the Ministry of the Interior and drawing on data collected by the OpenPolis Foundation on parliamentarians, the study analyses the socio-demographic and political profiles of female candidates for the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies in the single- and multi-member constituencies after adoption of the ‘Rosato Law’ and the introduction of ‘gender quotas’. The new rules enhance the presence of women in politics, but candidate selection and candidates’ positions in constituencies also depend on the regulatory frameworks of individual political parties and on informal rules and practices in the secret garden of politics. For this reason, the research takes into account the parties’ internal rules (as revealed by statutes, regulations and other documents) but also the concrete processes to which the selected women were subject. These refer to their social and political profiles, including their political allegiances and previous political careers in local government and Parliament; their statuses as newcomers or incumbents; the types of constituency for which they are chosen. For outgoing MPs only, the study also takes into account other indicators such as level of productivity, ‘changing political colours’ and rebel votes. The study throws light, on the one hand, on the way in which electoral mechanisms explain the under representation of women in Parliament, on the other hand, on the determinants of women’s political careers in individual parties.