Can social media campaigns help women politicians in gender-unequal countries of the EU? Evidence from Czech Republic

• Department of Economics

Sofia Trommlerová, Institute of Public Policy, Comenius University Bratislava, will present her paper "Can social media campaigns help women politicians in gender-unequal countries of the EU? Evidence from Czech Republic"

Women remain persistently underrepresented in political decision‑making across the European Union, particularly in gender‑unequal countries such as post-communist Central Europe. This paper examines whether targeted digital voter mobilization can help reduce the political gender gap in a proportional representation system with (semi-)open party lists. I study Vote for a Woman – a bottom‑up, non‑partisan, citizen-run social media campaign in Czechia that encouraged voters to cast preferential votes for women candidates on semi-open party lists in the 2021 and 2025 Czech parliamentary elections. I employ two different types of event studies and dynamic difference‑in‑differences strategies to estimate its causal impact on voter behavior with respect to women politicians. The results show that the campaign increased the share of preferential votes cast for women candidates by 16% in the first campaign rollout in 2021 and by 30% in the second rollout in 2025. It also increased the probability of a woman to be elected by 18-27%, with an increasing effect size over time. The results in both election years are driven by voters of two specific political parties. These findings provide the first causal evidence that a citizen‑driven social media initiative can meaningfully strengthen electoral support for women, even in contexts with long‑standing gender inequalities.