10.7910/DVN/MLUEAJ Magni, Gabriele Gabriele Magni Ponce de Leon, Zoila Zoila Ponce de Leon Harvard Dataverse 2020 Social Sciences gender bias, legislator, descriptive representation, audit experiments Magni, Gabriele Gabriele Magni Ponce de Leon, Zoila Zoila Ponce de Leon 2020-06-18 2020-06-22 10.7910/DVN/MLUEAJ/GM1ADP 10.7910/DVN/MLUEAJ/DQAOKQ 10.7910/DVN/MLUEAJ/XNVSPL 10.7910/DVN/MLUEAJ/MJC26J 561 15881 778272 9681 text/tab-separated-values application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document text/tab-separated-values type/x-r-syntax 1.0 Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. Are elected officials more responsive to men than women inquiring about access to government services? Women face discrimination in many realms of politics, but evidence is limited on whether such discrimination extends to interactions between women and elected officials. In recent years, several field experiments have examined public officials’ responsiveness. The majority focused on racial bias in the United States, while the few experiments outside the US were usually single-country studies. We explore gender bias with the first large-scale audit experiment in 5 countries in Europe (France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands) and 6 in Latin America (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Uruguay). A citizen alias whose gender is randomized contacts members of parliament about unemployment benefits or healthcare services. The results are surprising. Legislators respond significantly more to women (+3% points), especially in Europe (+4.3% points). In Europe, female legislators in particular reply substantially more to women (+8.4% points).