Still a glass ceiling?

Tracing the limits to

women’s representation in elected office

Corinna Kroeber, Vanessa Marent,

Jessica Fortin-Rittberger & Christina
Eder

Comparative European Politics

ISSN 1472-4790

Comp Eur Polit

DOI 10.1057/s41295-018-0114-5
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 Author's personal copy
Comp Eur Polit
https://doi.org/10.1057/s41295-018-0114-5

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Still a glass ceiling? Tracing the limits to women’s

representation in elected office

Corinna Kroeber1 • Vanessa Marent1 •

Jessica Fortin-Rittberger1 • Christina Eder2

Ó Macmillan Publishers Ltd., part of Springer Nature 2018

Abstract This article investigates the representation of women on the three sub-
national levels of government in Germany from 1995 to 2013, drawing on a novel
data collection. Although longitudinal trends point to an overall increase on the
national level, we find large variations—both upturns and downturns—from one
election to the next on the state, district, and municipal levels. Our results suggest
that a saturation point in women’s representation in subnational assemblies, located
around 25%, largely accounts for these fluctuations. Assemblies featuring a high
proportion of female officeholders before an election are more likely to experience
stagnation and declines in subsequent elections. Legislatures with a low share of
female representatives prior to an election, by contrast, experience the largest
positive changes in their proportion of women. These findings contradict established
theories that lead us to expect women’s representation to follow a self-reinforcing
process, with parity as an end point. Rather, we find that women hit a ‘glass ceiling’
far sooner.

Keywords Women’s representation
Subnational government
Gender

Elections
Glass ceiling

& Corinna Kroeber

Corinna.Kroeber@sbg.ac.at
Vanessa Marent
Vanessa.Marent@sbg.ac.at
Jessica Fortin-Rittberger
Jessica.Fortin-Rittberger@sbg.ac.at
Christina Eder
Christina.Eder@gesis.org
1
University of Salzburg, Rudolfskai 42, 5020 Salzburg, Austria
2
GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, B2,1, 68159 Mannheim, Germany
 Author's personal copy
C. Kroeber et al.

Introduction

While women make up half of the population, the number of female parliamentarians
is much lower around the world, albeit with considerable regional and national
differences.1 On the bright side, there have been substantial steps forward and the share
of female officeholders has reached an all-time high in many countries. A number of
scholars argue that equal gender representation arises naturally over time as more and
more women enter national legislatures (Matland 1993; Salmond 2006; Hughes and
Paxton 2008) and support for incremental and curvilinear increases has been widely
documented (Paxton et al. 2010; Salmond 2006; Davidson-Schmich 2007; Kolinsky
1993; McKay 2004; Caul Kittilson 2006; Davidson-Schmich and Kürschner 2011;
Fortin-Rittberger and Eder 2013). One justification for this anticipated increase in
women’s representation pertains to societal modernization tendencies which trans-
form people’s and parties’ attitudes toward women’s political activity. Another
explanation considers women’s representation as a self-reinforcing process, because
female legislators encourage and empower more women to come forward as
candidates for legislative office. Despite this bulk of evidence, stagnation and even
downturns in women’s representation were observed in countries with relatively high
shares of female officeholders like the Netherlands and Denmark (Kjaer 1999;
Leyenaar 2013). Such instances hint that explanations based on modernization-related
factors and self-reinforcing processes are likely only at work within certain confines.
Yet, very little is known about how far and where these limits operate, and if we find
them outside the few cases in which they have been observed so far. Our article seeks to
address this gap by shedding light on how the share of female officeholders develops in
subnational assemblies in Germany over time and whether a saturation point occurs at
a given moment.
Using a new and unique data collection mapping the representation of women at
all levels of government in Germany between 1995 and 2013 (Eder and Fortin-
Rittberger 2017), our examination of Germany’s three levels of subnational
government reveals striking patterns: We find the share of female officeholders to
vary considerably across time and space rather than to grow monotonously. First,
we observe variation across entities especially at the municipality level where
women hold between 3 and 58% of the legislative seats. Second, and more
interestingly, our analyses uncover both positive and negative changes in levels of
representation between elections. For instance, in the 2006 election, the proportion
of women leapt from 0% to more than 25% in two municipalities, while other cities
registered steep declines in women’s representation, as much as a 23% point
reduction in 2004. The German case therefore provides the ideal ground for a quasi-
experimental setup for the analysis of women’s representation at the local and
regional echelons over time.2
1
http://www.ipu.org/wmn-e/classif.htm (last accessed: 02/23/2016).
2
Germany is a federal state whose administrative structure is composed of three levels: Bund (federal),
Land (state), and Kommunal (local). The local echelon is further divided into municipalities (Gemeinden)
and districts (Kreise) that also include the municipalities within a given district territory. Bigger towns
may be categorized as ‘non-district’ municipalities (kreisfreie Städte)—independent of a district and
therefore combine the two levels of local government.
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Still a glass ceiling?

In addition to outlining these patterns, we show that the most powerful

explanation for growth, or decline, in the proportion of women in parliament
between two consecutive elections is the level of representation in the preceding
legislature, suggesting a limit to the applicability of both contagion and modern-
ization arguments. A low share of women in an assembly makes an increase in the
proportion of female officeholders in the next election more likely, while a more
egalitarian representation between the two genders is associated with a higher
likelihood of experiencing a decrease in the subsequent assembly. Our findings help
delineate the boundaries of contagion and modernization theories: The potential for
increases in women’s representation is not unlimited.

Women’s representation over time—a self-reinforcing process?

A number of scholars have provided evidence for the hypothesis that the proportion
of women in parliaments increases as time passes, either incrementally, or assumes
a curvilinear shape (Paxton et al. 2010; Dahlerup 1988; Matland 1998; Studlar and
McAllister 2002; Rosenbluth and Salmond 2006; Caul Kittilson 2006; Davidson-
Schmich and Kürschner 2011). These contributions view women’s representation as
a mostly self-reinforcing process, where increases in female legislators in
parliaments prior to an election (at t0) lead to additional women afterward (at t1),
and so on. The main mechanisms explaining these dynamics draw on societal
modernization, contagion effects, and interactions between candidates, political
parties, and voters.
Modernization theory-based accounts contend that the transition from industrial
economies to tertiary sector-based economies, a process experienced by most
developed democracies, goes hand in hand with the dissemination of post-materialist
values which encompass support for norms of gender equality (Inglehart 1997;
Inglehart and Norris 2003a, b). Initially, as post-materialist values take root, societies
gradually become more auspicious to gender equality norms, leading to the sequential
inclusion of women into the labor force and more active political participation
(Inglehart 1990, 337). In response to these societal changes, political elites make room
for women to enter the political stage (Inglehart and Norris 2003a). Abundant studies
show that modernization-related processes—such as increasing urbanization, a larger
proportion of women in the workforce, as well as a stronger tertiary sector—indeed
strengthen women’s representation in national parliaments (Carbert 2009; Henig and
Henig 2001; Kolinsky 1989; Matland and Studlar 1998; Moncrief and Thompson
1991; Stockemer and Byrne 2012; Siaroff 2000; Iversen and Rosenbluth 2008; Mateo
Diaz 2005; Rosenbluth and Salmond 2006), as well as in regional assemblies (Eder
et al. 2016; Stockemer and Sundström 2016).
Contagion is a process that takes place at the level of political parties. This
mechanism is most often spurred by small or new parties deciding to promote
women as candidates or adopt gender quotas in a way that is congruent with the
party’s ideology, but also to increase their vote share in targeted ways. These
changes, if electorally successful, generate pressure for larger and established
parties that are ideologically similar to follow suit: In order to attract voters, or not
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C. Kroeber et al.

to lose them, they also have to support more female candidacies. In this manner, the
female legislators of small parties ‘spill over’ to the larger ones thereby increasing
the overall proportion of women in legislatures (Matland and Studlar 1996a). While
the existence of contagion effects in the national parliaments of various countries
has been documented by several studies (Dahlerup and Freidenvall 2005; Matland
and Studlar 1996a), we know much less about the conditions under which contagion
occurs (Kenny and Mackay 2014; Davidson-Schmich 2010; Cowell-Meyers 2011).
In the German case, Kolinsky (1991) argues that contagion originated at the
moment when the Green party entered the Bundestag in the early 1980s and
compelled the Social Democrats (SPD) to adapt their nomination strategy to also
promote female candidates.
Furthermore, female politicians function as both role models and driving forces
in the nomination of additional women. Seeing women succeed motivates other
women to step forward as candidates, creating a ‘coattail effect’ (Lawless and Fox
2005; Wolbrecht and Campbell 2007; MacManus 1981). As the number of women
within parties rises, they eventually are in a position to push for the inclusion of
more women for political office (Tremblay and Pelletier 2001), but also for the
adoption of gender quotas (Caul 1999, 2001; Krook 2006), in addition to
transforming attitudes about women’s ability to govern (Alexander 2012). Hence,
the more women are in legislatures at t0, the more should be in the subsequent
legislatures at t1 (Dahlerup 1988). Several contributions show that the proportion of
women in national legislatures between two consecutive legislative periods are
indeed positively correlated (Caul 2001; Studlar and McAllister 2002) just as more
women in parliament lead to more female members of government (Davis 1997).
Likewise, evidence suggests that these developments in women’s representation in
national legislatures are similarly observable in subnational assemblies (Matland
and Studlar 1996b).
If modernization and contagion mechanisms are at work, they have clear
observable implications: The representation of women should be relatively equally
distributed over different levels of government within a single country. By the same
token, developments over time should follow monotonous increases. A number of
contributions, however, questions these patterns, and with this, the possibility of
reaching gender parity in the near future. Looking at local elections in the
Netherlands, Leyenaar (2013) observes that the share of women in elected offices
has stagnated since the 1990s. Kjaer (1999) finds that when local Danish assemblies
reach a ratio of women of about 30%, voters cease to reward parties for nominating
additional female candidates. Following electoral incentives, parties and selec-
torates adapt their nomination strategies, creating a situation of ‘saturation without
parity’ (Kjaer 1999). In short, these studies hint at the existence of a hidden barrier
to political office that falls short of parity. In the ensuing section, we investigate
whether the advances made in women’s representation at the national level have
spilled over to subnational assemblies across Germany’s three lower levels of
government, and whether we find smooth patterns of increases over time, in order to
trace the limits of applicability of modernization and contagion explanations.
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Still a glass ceiling?

Data and analytical strategy

For the purpose of this article, we make use of a novel set of data mapping the
representation of women at all levels of government in Germany between 1995 and
2013 (Eder and Fortin-Rittberger 2017). As we find large variation in the number of
female parliamentarians in the 2000s in particular on the local and district levels, the
Federal Republic provides an optimal testing ground for the different theoretical
claims. For all observations, we documented the absolute and relative number of
women in the respective parliament for each political party. These data were
gathered by assembling information from a number of government sources and by
contacting different authorities where information was not made publicly available.
The data are structured hierarchically with elections observed in municipalities
nested in districts and federal states. The overall dataset includes four national
elections, 68 state elections, 1023 district3 elections, and 3559 municipal4 elections
with varying quantities of observations per administrative entity. These data comprise
temporally consecutive data points for 1660 territorial entities in which we observe
between two and six elections. This leaves us with a total of 68 state elections, 1002
district elections, and 3338 municipal elections that lend themselves to analyses over
time.5 For the analyses performed in this article, we estimated fixed effects regressions
to model this data structure comprising different nested levels and time points. Entities
are modeled as geographically nested, while we consider time trends through a lagged
dependent variable (LDV) approach and fixed effects for all years.
The dependent variable used in the regression analyses maps the change in the
proportion of women in an assembly from t0 to t1. We hence subtracted the
proportion of female legislators elected at t0 from the share of female officeholders
at t1. Our main explanatory variable is the lagged proportion of women in an
assembly. Using the differential from one election to the next as the dependent
variable instead of the overall proportion of women allows us to abstract away from
contextual and time-invariant factors influencing the overall level of women’s
representation such as the socioeconomic and institutional contexts, as well as
overall attitudes. However, we do consider factors that can potentially vary from
one election to another and thus might capture some of the variations in the
proportion of women elected to the new assemblies. Furthermore, we control for
variables that influence the change in itself, its direction, or extent, as elaborated in
the ensuing section.
Party ideology (Dt 1 - t0): Abundant research shows that the proportion of left-
wing and minor parties has an influence on the proportion of women in an assembly
(Kenworthy and Malami 1999; Salmond 2006; Caul 2001; Beckwith 1992;
Kunovich and Paxton 2005; Matland and Studlar 1996b; Reynolds 1999). Left-wing
parties generally promote more female candidates and are more likely to adopt
gender quotas due to their ideological basis (Caul 1999) and consequently exert a

3
To avoid double observations, we included urban districts (kreisfreie Städte) as municipalities only.
4
The data at the municipal level were only available after 2001.
5
The national level had to be left out of our multivariate multilevel analyses due to the low number of
degrees of freedom (one entity, five federal elections 1998, 2002, 2005, 2009, and 2013).
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C. Kroeber et al.

beneficial impact on the level of women’s representation (see, for example, Lijphart
1999; Rincker 2009; Stockemer and Sundström 2016). For the purpose of this
article, we anticipate that a positive change in the seat proportion held by left-wing
parties should be positively correlated with a change in the total share of women.
Left-wing parties in Germany comprise the Social Democrats (SPD), the Green
party (Grüne) and the Left party (Linke).
We should not forget to account for the relevance of minor parties for women’s
representation at lower levels of government: regional parties and lists, loose
associations or lists drawn up for a single election, single-issue parties, and
independent candidates tend to have fewer female legislators (Fortin-Rittberger
et al. 2017). Accordingly, changes in the seat proportion held by minor parties
should be negatively correlated with the proportion of female legislators.
Average party magnitude (Dt1 - t0): We conjecture that the average size of the
parties influences the proportion of women elected to an assembly. Larger party
magnitudes are more permissive since competition for list positions decreases as
parties occupy more seats (Matland 1993, 742). To capture this effect at the district
level, we measure the average party magnitude for each election by adding the
number of seats per party and dividing it through the absolute number of parties
present in the assembly. We then calculate the change in the average party
magnitude from t0 to t1.
Effective number of parties (Dt 1 - t0): We introduce the effective number of
parties (ENP) in order to measure the degree of fragmentation in a party system
(Laakso and Taagepera 1979).6 We expect that increases in the ENP lead to greater
competition between parties, which in turn should open up opportunities for female
representatives (Norris and Inglehart 2001). The ENP for each election is measured
as a function of their vote share, and we subtracted the ENP at t1 from the ENP at t0
to consider change in the party structure.7
Legislative turnovers (Dt1 - t0): Next, legislative turnovers might influence the
proportion of women from one election to another, as elections offer varying
opportunities for new candidates—women—to enter a legislature. Where there are
fewer incumbents to defeat, opportunities for female candidates to succeed
generally increase (Schwindt-Bayer 2005; Andersen and Thorson 1984; Studlar
and Welch 1991; Studlar and McAllister 1991). As we were not able to gather
information for each individual candidate, we include legislative turnover at the
party level by calculating the overall change in the seat share for all parties using
absolute values.
Level of government: The most important time-invariant factor that influences
change in the proportion of women is the level of government. Higher echelons
might attract more female candidates due to the higher degree of professionalization
(Kjaer 2011; Eder et al. 2016), the more institutionalized recruitment procedures
(Caul 1999; Davidson-Schmich 2006; Henig and Henig 2001; Lovenduski and
6
Due to the highly aggregated electoral returns for the minor parties and independent candidates
provided by the lower levels of government, the ENP was calculated using a single aggregate category for
these entities. Therefore, the variable ENP does not permit to measure the full degree of fragmentation
and competition in a party system.
7
The corresponding formula is: ENP = 1/R(si)2.
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Still a glass ceiling?

Norris 1993), as well as the stricter implementation of gender quotas (Davidson-

Schmich 2016). This, by consequence, suggests that the state level should be more
likely to experience increases in the proportion of women than the district and
municipal levels.
Electoral formulas: Bearing in mind the large literature on the beneficial effects
of proportional representation (PR) on female and minority representation (for a
review of main contributions, see Norris 2004), we take into account whether
elections are held under PR or a mixture of electoral formulas and expect higher
increases in women’s representation under PR systems. No echelon in Germany
operates under a pure first-past-the-post system. Subnational electoral rules can
either be classified as pure PR or a mixed member proportional rule as in the
Bundestag elections (Eder and Magin 2008; Magin 2010b).8 In either case, the
federal state determines the electoral system applied for all districts and
municipalities within its territory. For all levels, the indicator is a dummy taking
the value of 1 for proportional representation (PR) and 0 for mixed member
proportional systems.
Population density: Last, as more liberal values in secular and urban environ-
ments lead to more female representatives (Magin 2010a; Davidson-Schmich 2006),
change in attitudes could also reasonably drive increases in the number of female
legislators from one election to the next. In addition, urban environments featuring
improved child care facilities as well as job opportunities should facilitate female
political engagement (Inglehart and Norris 2003a, 138; Moncrief and Thompson
1991; Matland and Studlar 1998; Carbert 2009; Andersen and Cook 1985). As
densely populated entities tend to be more urban and liberal at the same time, we
operationalize both variables through population density (inhabitants per km2).

Dynamics of female representation in Germany

To test whether there is a limit to women’s progression in Germany’s subnational

assemblies, we begin with descriptive statistics displaying the presence of women in
local, regional, and state assemblies over time. As a second step, we employ
multilevel linear regression models to analyze change in the proportion of female
parliamentarians over two consecutive elections and provide robustness checks for
our models. Finally, we present temporal trends in women’s representation for the
period between 1995 and 2013.
At first glance, women’s representation in Germany increases consistently at all
levels of government between 1995 and 2013. Figure 1 displays the average
proportion of women in German subnational assemblies—states, districts, and
municipalities—over this period of 18 years. The overall level of female
representation appears to grow linearly at all echelons over time. The share of
female representatives at the state level increased from 28.2 to 33.3%, from 24.4 to
26.6% at the district level, and from 23.3 to 26.4% at the municipal level. These

8
Due to data constraints it is not possible to disentangle the share of women elected on the proportional
and nominal tiers of mixed electoral systems.
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C. Kroeber et al.

35
% women in assemblies

30

25

20
1995 2000 2005 2010 2015
year
national assembly state assemblies
municipal assemblies district assemblies

Fig. 1 Linear fit of the percent of women in assemblies for national, state, district, and municipal
assemblies with 95% confidence intervals

figures suggest a positive time trend with more women parliamentarians from one
election to another, albeit with different growth rates.
However, focusing on these highly aggregated shares of female representatives
conceals substantively interesting patterns. When we take a closer look at each
assembly, we uncover considerable variation in the development of women’s
representation from one election to the next. Figure 2 provides scatter plots for the
proportion of women in consecutive elections held between 1995 and 2013 (t0 and
t1) for the three subnational echelons. For observations located above the reference
line, the proportion of women increased from t0 to t1, while for those below the line,
we observe downturns. We find that only 47% of the observations actually
experienced a growing number of female parliamentarians from one election to the
next, while in about 36% of the cases the number of women de facto decreased.9
While the observed values are tightly grouped at the state level, suggesting
relatively small changes in the representation of women over time, there is sizeable
variance at the municipal level. Lower levels of government therefore experience
much larger fluctuations in women’s representation over time.
Focusing on the linear fit lines for each subplot in Fig. 2 provides some
preliminary indications of the mechanisms at the source of these fluctuations:
Whether or not we register more or less female parliamentarians between two
consecutive elections largely hinges on the share of women elected in the previous

9
In 17% of the cases the proportion of women remained stable and the observations are exactly at the
reference line.
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Still a glass ceiling?

national assembly state assemblies

60
% women at t1
40
20
0

district assemblies municipality assemblies

60
% women at t1
40
20
0

0 20 40 60 0 20 40 60
% women at t0 % women at t0

Linear fit Reference line

Fig. 2 Scatter plot and linear fit of the proportion of women at t0 and t1 for state, district, and municipal
assemblies. Annotations: linear fit with 95% confidence intervals. The reference line equals x = y. The
‘plus’ marks the assemblies in Seesen and Bad Nenndorf (in 2006) and the ‘triangle’ the assembly of
Taucha (in 2004)

legislative period. In assemblies featuring a low proportion of women at t0, the

linear fit is located above the reference line, indicating an increase in women’s
representation in the subsequent election. The linear fit and the reference line
intersect at circa 32% women at t0 at the state level, 22% at the district level, and
24% at the municipality level. If the share of female officeholders at t0 lies above
these values, the linear fit runs below the reference line, an indication of frequent
decreases in women’s representation. Albeit counterintuitive at first glance, this is in
line with Kjaer’s (1999) study, where large inter-municipality variations and a
similar pattern of decreases in the numbers of female officeholders were uncovered
for Denmark. In Germany, this relationship holds for all three levels of government.
Table 1 displays the results of two multilevel regression models explaining the
change in the proportion of women in legislatures over two consecutive elections.
While Model 1 only includes dynamic control variables, Model 2 also incorporates
time-invariant factors such as level of government, electoral rules, and urban/rural
composition of each entity. Both models display positive constants, meaning that
the overall proportion of women in legislatures tends to increase from one election
to the next. In both models, however, we notice that the coefficient for the
proportion of seats held by women at t0 has a significant negative impact on the size
of this increase between elections. For each 1% increase in women at t0, the positive
change in the share of female representatives from t0 to t1 is reduced by about
0.33%-points in Model 1 and 0.36%-points in Model 2. Higher proportions of
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C. Kroeber et al.

Table 1 Change in the

Model 1 Model 2
proportion of women in a
b/SE b/SE
legislature explained by the
proportion of women before the
% women (at t0) - 0.330*** - 0.363***
election (t0)
(0.02) (0.02)
Dynamic controls
% minor parties (change t0 to t1) - 0.066*** - 0.052**
(0.02) (0.02)
% left-wing parties (change t0 to t1) - 0.017 - 0.006
(0.01) (0.01)
Party magnitude (change t0 to t1) 0.018 0.025
(0.06) (0.06)
ENP (change t0 to t1) 0.636 0.439
(0.44) (0.45)
Legislative turnover (t0 to t1) 0.044** - 0.005
(0.02) (0.02)
Assembly size (t0 to t1) 0.046 0.050
(0.04) (0.04)
Time-invariant controls
Dummy district - 1.387
(0.97)
Dummy municipality - 1.712
(2.81)
Annotations: Multilevel linear PR (vs. mixed) - 0.629
regression with elections in (0.40)
municipalities nested in districts
Inhabitants per km2 0.002***
in states. The model includes a
dummy variable for each year (0.00)
which is omitted from the table. Constant 10.877*** 9.431**
Standard errors in parantheses (2.99) (3.95)
*p \ 0.10, **p \ 0.05, Observations 1834 1720
***p \ 0.01

women at t0 therefore negatively impact the magnitude of the change in the share of
female legislators from t0 to t1.
In order to illustrate the substantive meaning of the parameter estimates
contained in our models, Fig. 3 displays the effect of the proportion of women at t0
on the predicted change in the share of female officeholders at t1, for the state,
district, and municipal levels (based on Model 2). While the impact of the share of
women at t0 remains the same in all three echelons, the constant varies due to the
influence of the level dummy variables. Assemblies comprising few women at t0
tend to experience considerable increases in the share of female officeholders in the
following election. If a municipal assembly was devoid of women at t0, we predict
an increase in the share of female officeholders of 9.2%-points in the following
election. As the proportion of women at t0 increases, the predicted positive change
in the t1-election shrinks and eventually flattens, which signals a saturation point for
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Still a glass ceiling?

20
change in % women t0 to t1

10

-10
0 10 20 30 40 50
% women at t0
state assembly district assembly municipal assembly

Fig. 3 Effect of the lagged proportion of women on change in the share of female representatives in an
assembly (t0 to t1). Annotations: linear predictions calculated based on Model 2 in Table 1. For the state-
level figure, the country and municipality dummies are set at zero; for the district-level and the
municipality-level figures, the respective dummy variable is set at one. All other variables are set at
means

women’s representation. The models forecast that in municipal assemblies where

women constitute 25.5% of the representatives, this proportion will not increase in
the subsequent election. This turning point is slightly higher in district and state
elections. Independent of the exact threshold, the model predicts negative change
from t0 to t1, and thus downturns in the share of women as the proportion of female
officeholders overcomes this saturation point. In municipal assemblies with 50%
women at t0, we forecast the proportion of women to decrease by 8.9%-points after
an election.
Adding a series of control variables does not lead to substantial changes. Most of
the variables measuring dynamics in the party structure fail to reach conventional
statistical significance. An important exception is the seat share of minor parties: If
the proportion of seats for minor parties increases by 10%-points from t0 to t1, the
share of women decreases by 0.66%-points, which is in line with existing research
showing that minor parties tend to have a negative impact on the proportion of
female legislators (Fortin-Rittberger et al. 2017). Interestingly, increases in the
share of left-wing parties from one election to another do not affect the size of the
changes in the proportion of women. While variation in the performance of left-
wing parties seems to explain the overall difference in women’s representation
between the state, district, and municipal levels in Germany, increases in left-wing
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C. Kroeber et al.

parties yield no clear short-term effects. One potential explanation for this could be
that the effect of party ideology does not unfold as a short-term process, but rather
over time via contagion, in a way that cannot be captured by our first-difference
approach to modelling.
Turning to the time-invariant factors we include in Model 2, our analyses further
reveal that more densely populated units of analysis—which we consider as a proxy
for urbanization and thus more secular and liberal values—yield the anticipated
positive effect on change in the proportion of women. Entities with 1000 more
inhabitants per km2 will have a 2%-point larger increase in female officeholders in
t1-elections (with p \ 0.000). The level of government does not reach a statistically
significant effect, but in this group of observations, municipality and district
elections experience considerably smaller increases in the number of female
officeholders than state elections. The simple fact that an assembly is at one of the
lower echelons decreases the predicted change in the share of female legislators by
about 1.5%-points. This is corresponds to our expectation that the higher echelon
should be more attractive to female candidates (Eder et al. 2016). The burden of pin-
pointing the underlying mechanism, that is, whether gender quotas, recruitment
procedures, or the overall level of professionalization drive this effect, remains
elusive with highly aggregated data: Ohmura et al. (2018), for instance, hypothesize
that the parliamentary careers of men and women follow different trajectories.
We conducted a series of robustness checks to ensure that our findings hold under
different model specifications. For one, we used alternative measures of the main
independent variable and ran separate models for each level of government (see
findings in ‘‘Appendix 1’’ and ‘‘Appendix 2’’). None of the robustness checks
influences our main findings, and the coefficients of the key variable of interest, the
proportion of women at t0, remain statistically significantly different from zero in all
tests.
The question remains, however, how the short-term patterns we uncovered
develop over longer periods, e.g., over a series of elections. As our dataset
comprises the time period between 1995 and 2013 and a maximum of six elections
per entity, we cannot make statements about longer trends, but only over the turn of
the millennium. Notwithstanding this limitation, Fig. 4 provides preliminary
impressions as to how a longitudinal pattern might look like. The figure displays
the development of the median spline of the proportion of women over six
consecutive elections for entities with (1) less than 10%, (2) 10–30%, and (3) more
than 30% female officeholders in the first election under analysis. We see that the
share of women at the first election is an important determinant of female
candidates’ electoral success in successive elections.
Entities with few (less than 10%) women in the first election tend to show strong
increases in the following elections. This pattern only applies to the district and
municipal levels as no state-level assembly features such a low percentage of
women. Of interest, the share of women at the district level does not continue to rise
incrementally, but is accompanied with a slight decrease in the third election. A
similar pattern appears for municipalities as well as states with an average
proportion of women at t0: Despite the up- and downturns, the median proportion of
women in these assemblies increases over the subsequent elections. By contrast, in
 Author's personal copy
Still a glass ceiling?

low share of women medium share of women high share of women

at t0 (<10%) at t0 (10-30%) at t0 (>30%)
40
% women in assemblies

30

20

10 10

1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 6
election
municipal assembly district assembly
state assembly national assembly

Fig. 4 Time trends for the proportion of women over consecutive elections for different baseline shares
of women in assemblies. Annotations: The figures show median splines (connected median values).
Grouping of entities according to the proportion of women at first observed election (t0)

assemblies with more than 30% female officeholders, numbers appear to randomly
increase and decrease from one election to the next with no clear upward trend.
The figure offers additional support for our argument that up- and downturns in
women’s representation do not appear randomly. Rather, they vary systematically:
The more women we observe in an assembly, the more likely we observe decreases
in the proportion of female officeholders in the next election. Additional progress in
women’s representation hence becomes less likely as the share of women in
assemblies increases. This adds an important nuance to the idea of women’s
representation as a linear self-reinforcing process. What we find is that once women
reach a certain level of representation in elected assemblies, progress becomes
uncertain at a level that is far from of numerical parity: a saturation point.

Conclusions

This article examined the electoral success of women on the three subnational levels
of government in Germany and sought to establish whether women face invisible
boundaries over which their advancement becomes more challenging. Drawing on a
novel dataset on women in German assemblies across all levels of subnational
government, we uncovered the existence of an informal threshold above which
advances in women’s presence slow down noticeably. While the bulk of literature
show that women’s representation is a self-reinforcing process in national
parliaments (Matland 1993; Salmond 2006; Hughes and Paxton 2008; Paxton
et al. 2010; Davidson-Schmich 2007; Kolinsky 1993; McKay 2004; Davidson-
 Author's personal copy
C. Kroeber et al.

Schmich and Kürschner 2011; Caul Kittilson 2006), our analyses substantiate
Leyenaar (2013) and Kjaer (1999) whose findings question these mechanisms. We
uncover what appears to be a saturation effect, or a glass ceiling, which is difficult to
overcome. The threshold we found is even lower than in the Danish case: In
Germany, the potential for increasing the presence of women in assemblies has been
already realized below 30%.10
The potential for growth in women’s representation is therefore limited, and this
observation is most conspicuous at the lower echelons of government. This
conclusion entails an important constraint to the applicability of both modernization
and contagion explanations. Their applicability is not uniform across different
contexts, but confined to a range this article has established: Once the represen-
tational threshold we found is attained, these explanations ostensibly lose their
explanatory power. While our findings do not challenge the validity of cross-
national findings showing modernization and contagion effects, we argue that their
explanatory power is limited to certain contexts.
Given that the share of female officeholders has now reached a historically high
proportion in many countries, with a world average of 23.4%, solving the puzzle
surrounding saturation effects and downturns in the share of female legislators
becomes all the more relevant. Studying factors that have the potential to shape
increases in women’s representation after the saturation point is reached will require
investigations beyond the scope of this article, as more extensive data coverage than
what we currently have at our disposal will be necessary. Potential explanations
might hinge on the supply and demand sides. On the supply side, women already
holding mandates in local assemblies might neither be interested, nor able to keep
their mandate in successive elections. Rather than seeking reelection, they could be
reluctant to continue running for office as local assembly work is often honorary. On
the demand side, parties’ recruiting and nomination processes might change in
tandem with the proportion of female representatives. Feminist activists in a party
can more efficiently lobby for increases in the share of women candidates if the
number of female officeholders in parliament is low (Kenny and Mackay 2014,
880). At the same time a backlash against the promotion of female candidates might
occur within parties, accounting for changes in the share of women from one
election to the next. Furthermore, parties may decide to prioritize other underrep-
resented groups (e.g., young people, immigrants) when a certain threshold of female
representatives is met. More detailed research on candidates and incumbency would
make it possible to investigate the impact of legislative turnovers, which is a
promising avenue for future research, in addition to shedding light on how context
shapes the recruitment strategies of parties.

Acknowledgements This work was supported by the Fritz-Thyssen-Stiftung (Grant AZ 20.14.0.003).

10
This finding is coherent with a recent study by Holtkamp et al. (2017), who show that this glass ceiling
might even be reached earlier when it comes to executive offices, since the share of female mayors in
large German cities decreased from 17.7% in 2008 to 8.2% in 2017.
 Author's personal copy
Still a glass ceiling?

Appendix 1: Robustness checks for Models 1 and 2—change

in the proportion of women in a legislature explained by the proportion
of women before the election (t0)

Model 1.1 Model 2.1 Model 1.2 Model 2.2 Model 1.3 Model 2.3
b/(SE) b/(SE) b/(SE) b/(SE) b/(SE) b/(SE)

% women - 0.409*** - 0.342*** - 0.366*** - 0.383***

(at t0) (0.07) (0.08) (0.03) (0.03)
Women - 0.118*** - 0.306***
(at t0), total (0.01) (0.02)
Squared % 0.002 - 0.000
women (0.00) (0.00)
(at t0)
% women 0.097*** 0.077**
(at t1) (0.03) (0.03)
Dynamic controls
% minor parties - 0.066*** - 0.052** 0.011 0.011
(change t0 to t1) (0.02) (0.02) (0.03) (0.03)
Minor parties - 0.113*** - 0.099***
(change t0 to t1), (0.02) (0.02)
total
% minor parties (at t0)
% left-wing - 0.017 - 0.006 0.054 0.043
parties (0.01) (0.01) (0.03) (0.03)
(change t0 to t1)
Left-wing - 0.017 - 0.002
parties (0.02) (0.01)
(change t0 to t1),
total
% left-wing parties (at t0)
Party - 0.000 0.001 0.016 0.025 0.039 0.039
magnitude (0.03) (0.03) (0.06) (0.06) (0.09) (0.09)
(change t0 to t1)
Party magnitude (at t1)
ENP 0.056 0.038 0.654 0.433 0.171 0.375
(change t0 to t1) (0.19) (0.19) (0.44) (0.46) (0.59) (0.61)
ENP (at t1)
Legislative 0.042*** 0.001 0.043** - 0.004 0.049** 0.013
turnover (0.01) (0.01) (0.02) (0.02) (0.02) (0.03)
(t0 to t1)
Assembly size 0.326*** 0.247*** 0.047 0.049 0.046 0.030
(change t0 to t1) (0.02) (0.02) (0.04) (0.04) (0.04) (0.05)
Assembly size 0.089***
(at t0) (0.01)
 Author's personal copy
C. Kroeber et al.

Model 1.1 Model 2.1 Model 1.2 Model 2.2 Model 1.3 Model 2.3
b/(SE) b/(SE) b/(SE) b/(SE) b/(SE) b/(SE)

Time-invariant controls
Dummy district - 1.416*** - 1.399 - 0.502
(0.47) (0.97) (1.07)
Dummy - 1.376*** - 1.725 - 0.546
municipality (0.53) (2.81) (4.13)
Inhabitants per 0.001*** 0.002*** 0.001***
km2 (0.00) (0.00) (0.00)
PR (vs. mixed) - 0.202 - 0.624 - 0.879
(0.18) (0.40) (0.70)
Constant 0.884 - 0.746 11.597*** 9.226** 6.457 3.966
(1.43) (1.44) (3.06) (4.02) (4.49) (6.17)
Observations 1834 1720 1834 1720 922 878

Annotations: Standard errors in parentheses. Multilevel linear regression with elections in municipalities
nested in districts nested in states. The model includes a dummy variable for each year which is omitted
from the table
*p \ 0.10, **p \ 0.05, ***p \ 0.01

Appendix 2: Robustness checks for Model 1—change in the proportion

of women in a legislature explained by the proportion of women
before the election (t0) at the state, district, and municipality levels

State District Municipality

b/(SE) b/(SE) b/(SE)

% women (at t0) - 0.257** - 0.256*** - 0.367***

(0.10) (0.03) (0.02)
Dynamic controls
% minor parties (change t0 to t1) - 0.177 - 0.081** - 0.043*
(0.14) (0.04) (0.03)
% left-wing parties (change t0 to t1) 0.161* 0.057 0.008
(0.09) (0.05) (0.02)
Party magnitude (change t0 to t1) 0.007 0.043 - 0.070
(0.11) (0.09) (0.11)
ENP (change t0 to t1) 0.039 0.569 0.388
(1.53) (0.88) (0.56)
Legislative turnover (t0 to t1) - 0.177 - 0.081** - 0.043*
(0.14) (0.04) (0.03)
Assembly size (change t0 to t1) 0.062 0.052 0.106
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Still a glass ceiling?

State District Municipality

b/(SE) b/(SE) b/(SE)

(0.04) (0.07) (0.07)

Constant 9.056** 7.076*** 7.230***
(4.26) (0.85) (1.01)
Observations 52 596 1186

Standard errors in parentheses. Regression results for each level of government separately. The model
includes a dummy variable for each year which is omitted from the table
*p \ 0.10, **p \ 0.05, ***p \ 0.01

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Corinna Kroeber is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Comparative Politics at the University of Salzburg,

where she also received her Ph.D. in October 2017. Her research interests include the representation of
women, ethnic minorities, and citizens of immigrant origin, as well as consequences of electoral systems.
Her work appeared in Government and Opposition, Parliamentary Affairs, and Ethnopolitics.
 Author's personal copy
C. Kroeber et al.

Vanessa Marent is a Ph.D. Fellow in Austrian Politics in Comparative European Perspective at the
University of Salzburg, Austria. Her main research focus is on gender and populism and the
representation of women.

Jessica Fortin-Rittberger is Professor of Comparative Politics at the University of Salzburg. Her main
areas of research interest include political institutions and their measurement with particular focus on
electoral rules, women’s political representation, as well as the impact of state capacity on
democratization. Her work has appeared in Comparative Political Studies, European Journal of Political
Research, European Union Politics, and Political Research Quarterly.

Christina Eder is Senior Research Associate and Head of the Research Data Center ‘Elections’ at
GESIS–Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, Mannheim. Her main areas of research interest include
political behavior, political institutions and their measurement, as well as female political representation.
Her research has been published in journals such as Comparative European Politics, Parliamentary
Affairs, Government and Opposition, West European Politics, and Politische Vierteljahresschrift.