Putting their money where their mouth is: The gendered dynamics of central party financial transfers to local election candidates

Abstract

Political parties around the world have made widely publicized efforts to improve women’s representation in elected office. While many have investigated these efforts by focusing on gender dynamics during candidate recruitment and selection, party support for women after they are nominated remains somewhat under-analysed. We begin addressing this gap by asking if central party bodies provide women candidates with additional financial support during general election campaigns. Our study leverages population data capturing intraparty financial transfers within three major parties during the 2008 and 2011 Canadian federal elections (n=1845). The results demonstrate that parties, regardless of ideology, can and do support women candidates with additional campaign funds. However, support from the centre is not always consistent across time or competitive contexts. We conclude that if political parties are sincere in wanting to reduce representational inequities, then consistently providing women candidates with additional financial support is another way of doing so.

Keywords

women’s representation political parties election campaigning campaign financing Canada

Introduction

Political parties are the essential gatekeepers to elected office (Baer, 1993; Cross et al., 2022; Caul 1999; Pruysers et al., 2017). As the organization with a monopoly over the path to the legislature, parties are centrally implicated in the underrepresentation that characterizes elected governments around the world (Reynolds, 1999). The fact that women account for just one-quarter of lower house representatives worldwide (Interparliamentary Union, 2019) is therefore viewed as a failure of political parties. While much has been written about the extent to which parties encourage, recruit, and nominate women candidates for election (Cross and Pruysers, 2019; Cheng and Tavits, 2011; Krook, 2010; Niven, 1998; Pruysers and Cross, 2016; Pruysers and Blais, 2019; Rahat et al., 2008; Tremblay and Pelletier, 2001; Thomas and Bodet, 2013; Verge and De la Fuente, 2014; Cross and Young, 2013), less has been written about what happens after the nomination. Recruiting and nominating women, while important steps toward more effective and equitable representation, are only part of the process. What kinds of support do political parties offer their women candidates during the general election?

If parties want to elect more women, one possible way to achieve this goal is to channel central party money to women candidates during election campaigns (Buckley and Mariani, 2023). Research suggests, unsurprisingly, that money is the lifeblood of electoral and party politics, especially in the age of professionalized and increasingly costly election campaigns (Norris, 2000). More money results in more spending, more spending results in more votes, and more votes results in better election chances, especially for challengers (e.g., Carty and Eagles, 2005; Fisher et al., 2014). Money and campaign spending, however, are predictably gendered. Recent evidence suggests that women challengers “must spend more to achieve the same results as men” (Herrnson et al., 2022: 463).¹ The central question of this paper is whether political parties provide more financial support to the men or women carrying their banner. In other words, while parties often extol the need for more women to be elected (Cross, 2006), do they put their money where their mouth is when it comes to campaign funding?

Drawing on a unique dataset of observable intraparty financial transfers derived from financial reports submitted to Elections Canada for the 2008 and 2011 Canadian elections, we explore who is more likely to receive central party funding: men or women. Given what we know about the gendered dynamics within political parties (Sanbonmatsu, 2006; Thomas and Bodet, 2013), we expect to see parties sending a disproportionate amount of central party funding to men, as opposed to women. At the same time, given the established relationship between party ideology and more equitable gender outcomes (Caul, 1999; Tremblay, 2007), we expect the pattern of disproportionate funding for men to be especially pronounced in parties on the right of the political spectrum. Results reveal that Canadian political parties have the ability to strategically funnel campaign funds to women candidates, but that this has not been a consistent priority.

Party financing, local campaigns, and candidate gender

While research suggests that local candidate effects are often modest (Blais et al., 2003; Roy and Alcantara, 2015; Stevens et al., 2019), it would be incorrect to conclude that local campaigns are completely irrelevant to election outcomes. A large body of evidence from a variety of different national/institutional contexts – mixed-member proportional voting in Germany (Gschwend and Zittel, 2015), single-transferrable voting in Ireland (Benoit and Marsh, 2003), alternative voting in Australia (Forest et al., 1999), and single member voting in France (Palda and Palda 1998) and the United Kingdom (Fisher et al., 2014) – finds a positive correlation between campaign spending and party vote share in the district. Major party candidates in Canada, for instance, can expect to earn an additional 0.3 to 0.7% of the vote for every $1000 spent (Carty and Eagles, 2005). Marginal changes to campaign intensity in competitive districts can, in the aggregate, affect parliamentary standings, thus influencing which party (or parties) wins power. As most candidates do not spend the legally permissible limit, local candidate spending represents an important, and often not fully maximized, opportunity to influence the campaign and its outcome.

Raising and spending the maximum allowable limit, however, is not always possible, especially for women candidates who can often face additional gendered barriers in their fundraising and campaign efforts (Murray et al., 2023). Tolley et al. (2022:265), for instance, write that “the very donors who are most likely to give to women candidates — women — give less money and less often.” Likewise, Jenkins (2007) reports that women candidates need to spend more time fundraising and need to rely on more techniques than men. Furthermore, women still make up a relatively small proportion of incumbent candidates. Not only do incumbents raise considerably more money than challengers (Krasno et al., 1994), but women challengers must spend more than men to achieve similar results (Herrnson et al., 2022).

In an attempt to maximize campaign efficacy, many parties make use of stratarchical arrangements that enable local party organizations to individualize their ground campaign (Carty, 2004). Although the party on the ground has a degree of autonomy (Robbins-Kanter, 2022; Kefford, 2018), these arrangements provide considerable authority to the central party apparatus too (Cross, 2018). Indeed, the centre often plays a supporting role to local campaigns, organizationally and financially, especially in highly competitive districts where additional effort can be decisive (Currie-Wood, 2020; Denver et al., 2003). Cross et al. (2020), for example, demonstrate that the central party is remarkably active in distributing party funds to local candidates, with central party money representing approximately one-quarter of all funds that grassroots campaigns have access to during Canadian election seasons. Central party offices are known to provide substantive levels of financial support to legislative candidates elsewhere too, including Ireland (Buckley and Mariani, 2023), Italy (Feo et al., 2023), the United Kingdom (Laffin et al., 2007), and the European Parliament (Bøgglid and Pedersen, 2018).

Beyond money, the party at the centre is also active when recruiting and endorsing election candidates. In fact, central involvement in candidate endorsement can be instrumental for increasing the proportion of women each party nominates (Albaugh, 2022; Gauja and Cross, 2015; Pruysers and Cross, 2016), in part because local executives do not typically account for gender (or race, ethnicity, Indigeneity, etc.) unless they are sufficiently comprised of members from these groups (Cheng and Tavits, 2011; Cross and Pruysers, 2019; Tremblay and Pelletier, 2001; Tolley, 2019). Given that central party officials have been known to use their power during the nomination process to endorse women candidates (Rahat et al., 2008; Koop and Bittner, 2011), and that parties often publicize the number of women they nominate as evidence of addressing representational deficiencies (Cross 2006; Kenney and Verge, 2016), it is reasonable to ask whether political parties use financial resources at the centre to help fund the women who they nominate on the ground.² In this regard we put forward two hypotheses.

While voters may not be overtly biased against women candidates (Sevi et al., 2019), there is good reason to believe that party structures, processes, and elites favour men. For instance, parties frequently endorse women as candidates in voting districts where they have little chance of winning. Labelled as ‘sacrificial lambs’ (Canon, 1993; Thomas and Bodet, 2013; Martínez i Coma and Lago, 2022), one outcome of this trend is that women are elected less often than men. Contributing to such patterns are longstanding stereotypes regarding women’s political ability – stereotypes that are held by citizens (Chen et al., 2023; Pruysers and Blais, 2017) and elites (Sanbonmatsu, 2006) alike. Given that campaign resources are finite, that women are selected as candidates, disproportionately, in uncompetitive ridings where additional funds may have less efficacy, and longstanding negative stereotypes about women’s political ability, we expect the central party apparatus to transfer less money to women than it does to men. While we expect competitiveness to be a driving force here, we suspect this pattern will hold even after accounting for district factors (e.g., incumbency, competitiveness).

On average, women candidates will receive less central party funding than men.

In addition to this general trend, there are important reasons why party-level differences might impact the relationship between candidate gender and financial support from the central campaign organization. Centre/left parties are typically more inclined to address the underrepresentation of women through organizational reforms than are parties on the ideological right (Caul, 1999; Krook et al., 2009; Vandeleene, 2014). Centre/left parties tend to create elected positions for women on party executives (Allern and Verge, 2017; Everitt, 2017) and are also more likely to establish gender quotas (or informal targets) when recruiting and endorsing candidates (Pruysers et al., 2017). As a result of these organizational structures, centre/left parties tend to nominate and elect more women.

In Canada, we see these patterns clearly. The New Democrats and Liberals routinely nominate more women candidates than do the Conservatives (Cross et al., 2022). Furthermore, centre/left parties have established special campaign funds to support women candidates that are administered by the central party office. The New Democratic party, a labour party that sits on the ideological left (McGrane, 2019), has a special campaign fund called the Agnes Macphail Fund. The Liberal party, which dominates Canadian politics from the ideological centre (Johnston, 2017), has the Judy LaMarsh Fund. Contributions to these centrally administered funds are reserved for assisting women running for public office (Brodie and Chandler, 1991). The Conservative party, by contrast, does not have a similar women’s campaign fund in place.

The gender gap in central party funding will be more pronounced in parties on the right of the political spectrum.

Research design and data

Canada is an ideal case for investigating the financial support central party offices provide women candidates for a number of reasons. First, the country’s single member plurality electoral system produces an institutional environment where parties must contest elections nationally and locally (Carty and Eagles, 2005). Local candidates, and the electoral district associations (EDAs) supporting their electoral bids, are preoccupied with winning the election in their own district. The institutional logic of plurality voting encourages candidates to individualize their constituency campaign from the national campaign. Candidates who have secured a major party endorsement develop their own campaign organizations independently from the central party office to ensure they have sufficient autonomy (Pruysers and Cross, 2018; Sayers, 1999).

While local candidates are heavily relied upon for mobilizing support on the ground (Cross, 2016), they can receive organizational and financial support from the central campaign (Cross et al., 2020; Currie-Wood, 2020). A senior group of central campaign operatives is tasked with developing and executing strategies designed to maximize the number of seats won at the national level. Part of this calculus involves distributing additional funding to local candidates (Cross et al., 2022). Research shows that monetary transfers from the centre are generally larger in regions and districts that are more competitive. However, these studies focus exclusively on geography to the exclusion of other factors such as candidate gender (Coletto and Eagles, 2011; Currie-Wood, 2020; Westlake, 2022; for an important exception, see Carty and Eagles, 2005).

Second, Canada’s regulatory setting makes it possible to observe monetary transfers within political parties. Many parliamentary democracies have distinct financial regulations for local and national campaigns (something which reflects their stratarchical organizations), but Canadian reporting rules are among the “most rigorous” (Nassmacher, 2006: 451). The constituent units of Canada’s parties are statutorily required to disclose financial reports to Elections Canada, the arms-length administrator of federal elections. Candidates must report the financial contributions received from other legal entities of the party (Canada Elections Act, 2000: Sec. 477.59(2)[j]). This includes monetary transfers from the central party office, or “registered parties” as they are defined by election law.³ Reporting requirements enable us to identify which candidates receive supplementary financial support from the central party office. The Canadian case therefore allows us to peak behind the curtain that normally obscures observing how central party officials allocate financial resources to candidates at the district-level.

We focus our analysis on the Liberal, Conservative, and New Democratic parties. These parties routinely endorse candidates in each of the country’s voting districts (Pruysers et al., 2020) and frequently capture the majority of both votes and seats during federal elections. They also result in considerable variation on the ideological spectrum, with the Conservatives firmly planted on the right, the Liberals closer to straddling the ideological centre, and the New Democrats situated on the left (Cross et al., 2022). Our dataset includes observations for the entire universe of general election candidates for Liberals, Conservatives, and New Democrats for the 2008 and 2011 federal elections (n = 1845).⁴

The period of analysis—the 2008 and 2011 federal elections—permits us to perform a hard test of central party support for women candidates. The central offices of Canadian parties developed an exceptional amount of spending capacity via a per vote subsidy that existed from 2004 until 2015 (Young, 2017). The subvention resulted in central offices receiving $1.75 for each vote won in the previous election campaign.⁵ This party financing regime equipped central offices with unprecedented levels of financial stability and, consequently, increased their ability to support local candidates with additional campaign funding (Currie-Wood, 2022).⁶

The dependent variable for this study is the total amount of money a local candidate receives from the central party office. We capture this variable from Part 2d (‘Statement of Transfers Received’) of the Elections Canada Candidate Campaign Returns ‘as reviewed’ for each of the parties in both elections. For instance, Martha Dennis, the Liberal party candidate for the Oxford district, received $1000 from the Federal Liberal Agency of Canada in the 2008 federal election. She also received $200 from the Liberal Party of Canada—Ontario, the central branch of the federal party in the province. The dependent variable for this case is $1200 because this Liberal candidate received this sum of financial support from the central party apparatus. We contend this is the most suitable way for operationalizing how much financial support central party officials provide local candidates. Because the measure is in dollar values, it is comparable across constituencies, parties, and time. More importantly, limiting our analysis to monetary transfers made directly by central officials strengthens the validity and reliability of the dependent variable. While some have reported that national targeting strategies may involve coordinating monetary transfers sent between local party associations, this occurs most substantively within the Conservative party (Currie-Wood, 2020). Moreover, data from interviews reveal that members on the ground play an involved role when determining which candidate(s) they ultimately send money to (Currie-Wood, 2022: 287-88). Limiting our analysis to monetary transfers from the central party office ensures that we are strictly capturing decisions made by central (rather than local) party officials.

Similar to other studies (Tolley et al., 2022; Pruysers, 2023), we coupled these financial data with measures obtained from a variety of other sources. Our focal independent variable is candidate gender. This dichotomous measure was collected from candidate biographies, newspapers, and other online sources. Similar methods were utilized to obtain a variable for incumbency. Both measures were later validated against Sevi and colleague’s (2019) dataset of Canadian elections to ensure accuracy. We operationalize party competitiveness at the district-level using Bodet’s (2013) stronghold and battleground metrics.⁷ This measure is ideal because it captures what Bodet (2013) defines as “party support stability,” or the fluidity of party competition between elections. Equally important, the stronghold/battleground classification allows for identifying which party is very likely to win an uncompetitive district. A voting district is designated as an uncompetitive “stronghold” when (i) the party endorsed candidate’s vote share is notably larger than winners with smaller margins of victory and (ii) party vote share in the district does not fluctuate dramatically from one election to the next. Highly competitive “battleground” ridings are designated when the conditions for a stronghold are not satisfied (Bodet, 2013: 584).

We include other variables to control for local factors that may also impact how central party funds are distributed. A control for the strength of an EDA is estimated using Elections Canada “registered association financial returns.” We do so by adding together total private contributions to the EDA during the election year (‘Total contributions $’ from Part 4 of the Elections Canada registered association financial returns) and the savings carried over from the previous year (‘opening balance $’). We divide the sum by the district expense limit. This creates a comparable measure for EDA strength in each district. We also include a control for the province of Quebec. This is to account for the fact that Canadian parties regularly establish parallel campaign operations in Quebec that are somewhat distinct from the Rest of Canada (Flanagan, 2009; McGrane, 2019; Jeffrey, 2021). Given the differences in urban versus rural ridings (Armstrong et al., 2022), we control for the urban/rural nature of the district using a dummy variable that was obtained from Elections Canada. Finally, we include a dummy measure for election year as well.

Results

We begin investigating whether parties are ‘put their money where their mouth is’ by analysing the bivariate relationship between candidate gender and the financial support local candidates receive from the central party office. Recall that while we expect men to receive more money than women in general, we expect this trend to be particularly evident in the case of the Conservatives. Accordingly, we proceed first with party-level results to assess potential differences rooted in the ideology and organization of each party.

Despite our expectations, all three parties appear to provide relatively equitable levels of central party financial support to both men and women. Figure 1 illustrates the average amount of money transferred from party headquarters to local candidates by gender. Based on these pooled data (2008 and 2011 combined), there are no meaningful gender differences in the amount of money central party offices funnel to local election candidates. For instance, the Liberals sent the typical local candidate $9,135, with women receiving just $31 more than men. Likewise, the New Democrats sent its women election candidates just $290 more than men. While women running for the Conservative party received slightly lower amounts of financial support from party headquarters, it remains negligible at $293 less than men. Overall, then, the pooled data provide no compelling evidence for either hypothesis: women do not appear to receive significantly less than men, and this applies across all parties.

Figure 1.

Mean transfers from central office to local candidates by party and gender (pooled data for 2008 and 2011 federal elections).

When probing beyond the pooled data by analysing fiscal transfers by election year, we discover that the relationship between candidate gender and central party financial support is more complicated. There is some evidence of a relationship between candidate gender and how central offices distribute money to local campaigns, but this is highly contextual to each federal election campaign. The Conservatives, for instance, transferred substantially more money from the centre to women in the 2008 election (on average $3605 more). This corresponds to a noticeable spike in the number of women the Conservative party nominated as candidates for that election. The percentage of women endorsed by the Conservatives nearly doubled from 12% in 2006 to 20% in 2008. Some have speculated that the spike in 2008 was driven by backroom efforts “to address a potentially embarrassing absence of women” from the Conservative party’s parliamentary caucus (Young, 2013: 265).⁸ At the same time, others have pointed out that this effort was “short-lived” because the proportion of women nominated by the Conservatives stalled around 20% in subsequent elections (Everitt, 2017: 308–310). The move away from improving women’s representation may help explain why the gendered pattern of money distributed by the centre inverts in 2011: Conservative men received $3894 more in funding from the national office than women.

The impact of election campaign effects is not limited to the Conservative party. Within the New Democratic Party (NDP), we find that the gender gap favours women in 2008. The NDP’s central office transferred women candidates $1048 more than men. However, while the NDP’s positioning on the left suggests that this support might endure across elections, we find that it is not carried forward. There are negligible differences in the amounts transferred to men and women in the 2011 election year (men received $209 more than women). The one exception to this inconsistency appears to be the Liberals as the central party provided modest amounts of additional financial support to women in both elections. Interestingly, the mean Liberal difference more than doubles from an additional $451 in 2008 to more than $1000 in 2011.

One factor that appears to be related to differences across election campaign periods is the overall amount of money central party officials allocate for assisting local candidates. When central party budgets are larger, as was the case for the New Democrats ($1.4 million) and Conservatives ($2.8 million) in 2008 and the Liberals ($4.2 million) in 2011, women candidates tend to receive more money than men. Conversely, when the total amount funnelled from the central campaign to local candidates diminishes ($1.8 million for the Conservatives and less than $1 million for the NDP in 2011), money is more likely to be distributed to men. That this pattern is relatively consistent suggests that the central campaign’s total budget allocation for local candidates may be more impactful than a party’s ideological orientation.

Of course, election campaign effects (captured by year) are not the only possible factors at play when central operatives triage which candidates will receive supplementary campaign funding. Many point to electoral competitiveness at the district-level as the paramount concern (Carty and Eagles, 2005; Currie-Wood, 2020; Denver et al., 2003). Accounting for district competitiveness becomes crucial to our analysis because research shows that women are disproportionately nominated as election candidates in ridings the party is likely to lose (Thomas and Bodet, 2013).

The relationship between candidate gender and central party financial support is further complicated when controlling for district competitiveness. Despite the notable gender difference observed within the Conservative party in 2008, much of the effect is being driven by disproportionate amounts of money flowing to women candidates in ridings the Conservatives were very likely to win. The Conservatives transferred 147% more to women candidates running in stronghold ridings than they did men in similarly safe seats. In contrast, Conservative women in battleground ridings received 35% less money from the centre than did men in other highly competitive ridings during the 2008 election. Notably, central party financial support for women candidates did not extend in similar ways during next federal election.

As illustrated in Figure 2, Conservative headquarters transferred the bulk of financial support to men in the 2011 election (on average nearly $4000 more). That men received more support than women in both highly competitive ridings and other party strongholds adds credence to earlier claims of central officials moving away from addressing deficiencies in women’s representation. Quite strikingly, the largest gender difference was in constituencies where the local Conservative candidate was almost certain to lose. Men running in these districts received 231% more money from the centre than women, compared to 138% in favour of men in highly competitive ridings.

Figure 2.

Gender, district competitiveness, and mean transfers from the central party office to local candidates within the Conservative Party of Canada. Note: * p ≤ .05.

Figure 3.

Gender, district competitiveness, and mean transfers from the central party office to local candidates within the Liberal Party of Canada.

Figure 4.

Gender, district competitiveness, and mean transfers from central office to local candidates within the New Democratic Party of Canada.

Moving to the Liberal party, Figure 3 shows further evidence of district-level competition influencing how central party offices choose to direct campaign funding to local candidates. Men are somewhat favoured in stronghold districts, as evidenced by receiving higher levels of support compared to women in both elections. However, Liberal headquarters directed more money to women in competitive battlegrounds and safe seats for other parties. The gender gap was widest in battleground ridings in 2008 where women received almost twice as much central party funding as men. The relative difference in battleground ridings diminished to 40% in the subsequent election. The additional financial support for women candidates in these constituencies likely demonstrates a concerted effort to assist women seeking elected office. While the highest averages of money in 2011 were sent to candidates in Liberal strongholds—likely to save as many incumbents as possible in an election that delivered the party its worst electoral drubbing in history (Johnston, 2017)—the gender differences are minimal at an average $704.

The New Democrats are the only party to distribute larger amounts of financial support to women candidates in all three competitive settings, although as reported in Figure 4 this was limited to the 2008 campaign. The gap between women and men was largest in electoral districts that were most competitive that year. Women candidates in battleground ridings received twice as much supplementary funding from the national organization than men (an average of $12,987 vs $6473). The gap in financial support for women and men narrows in other competitive contexts, but never fully disappears. It sits at around 33% more for women in districts that are safely held by the NDP, and modestly declines to 25% in other party strongholds.

Although it is tempting to attribute the favourable financial support NDP women candidates received in the 2008 campaign to institutional features—for instance, the New Democrats were the first Canadian party to ‘freeze’ local candidate nominations to ensure a proper search for women contestants (Erickson 1993)—this support diminished in the 2011 federal election. In a reversal from the 2008 election, men in very safe NDP districts received 26% more central party funding compared to women. The gender difference observed in other party strongholds evaporates. The only competitive context where women continue to receive additional financial support is in battleground ridings.

The bivariate relationships suggest that parties can support women candidates with additional campaign funds, but have done so inconsistently. We further test this finding by modelling central party money transfers to local candidates while controlling for multiple variables. The model includes an explanatory variable for candidate gender and controls for incumbency, EDA strength, district competitiveness, district urbanity, region (the province of Quebec), and election year. The results are reported in Table 1.

Table 1.

Central party transfers to local candidates.

	Conservative party		Liberal party		New Democratic party
	b	std. error	b	std. error	b	std. error
Gender (women)	662.09	1307.58	2088.12**	1050.20	505.09	701.64
EDA strength	−21.17**	8.81	62.24***	11.25	19.31	16.59
Incumbent	1243.28	1803.41	−2021.70	1750.99	1640.60	2057.22
Conservative stronghold			−4936.93**	2081.40	−3163.93	2099.50
Liberal stronghold	−1557.86	2229.97			−2369.19	2148.90
NDP stronghold	− 1965.52	2594.61	−1141.03	2502.77
Bloc stronghold	4727.90*	2872.62	−915.37	2510.86	−5967.29**	2437.28
Battleground	1161.72	1830.23	−871.97	1702.76	−68.25	2003.31
Rural district	475.47	1267.97	1315.83	1158.73	−311.06	806.14
Quebec	24,010.23***	1660.17	−2686.23*	1528.56	2723.41***	1054.73
2008 election	3073.50***	1065.86	−8859.33***	984.54	2029.67***	687.80
Constant	989.91	2259.23	12721.57	2230.91	3812.10	2083.59
Adjusted R-Square	0.4575		0.1898		0.0617
N	614		615		616

Note: for district competitiveness, we use the party’s own strongholds as the reference category. p ≤0.1*, ≤0.05**, ≤0.01***.

Given the patterns uncovered earlier, it is unsurprising to find that women candidates do not receive substantially less money from the central party office than men. When controlling for other factors, Liberal women receive $2088 more than men, followed by the Conservatives at $662, and New Democratic women receiving the least additional funding at $505. Interestingly, the regression coefficients are positive for women candidates in all three parties. While this suggests a more optimistic story than the one discussed earlier in this section, the dollar amounts are low enough in the Conservatives and New Democrats to conclude that no meaningful additional assistance is provided to women. Only the Liberal party appears to financially support women candidates in a meaningful way.

Consistent with other studies (Carty and Eagles 2005; Currie-Wood 2020; Westlake 2022), our findings suggest that other strategic objectives—mainly regionalism and party competitiveness at the district-level—are a driving factor in why central party officials allocate supplementary funding to certain local candidates. For instance, the largest regression coefficient for the Conservative party is the dummy variable for Quebec. Holding other factors constant, including EDA strength, Conservative candidates in Quebec received $24,010 more than candidates in other provinces. This likely reflects ongoing efforts by the Conservatives to make inroads in that province, an aspiration that never fully materialized during their decade in power (Ellis 2016). The Liberal party, on the other hand, sent $2686 less to Quebec candidates compared to those in the Rest of Canada. The province of Quebec was once the ‘veto player’ contributing to Liberal dominance in Canadian elections, but largely abandoned the federal party after 1980 (Johnston 2017). It appears the Liberals chose to target central funding in other regions where they had a stronger organizational presence, as further evidenced by the positive correlation between central party money transfers and EDA strength. These results contribute to our principal conclusion that parties only support women election candidates with additional money when they choose to do so.

Conclusion

The central question of this study is whether political parties put their money where their mouth is when it comes to financially supporting women candidates. In particular, we explored the extent to which central party money was transferred to support women’s local constituency campaigns in recent Canadian federal elections. Drawing on a unique dataset that includes the entire universe of Liberal, Conservative, and New Democratic candidates in 2008 and 2011 (n= 1845), we tested two hypotheses: that parties would transfer less money to women on average (H1), and that this trend would be most evident in the Conservatives (H2).

The results of our empirical analysis did not provide compelling evidence for either hypothesis. Contrary to H1, parties do not transfer significantly less money to women than men. In fact, Table 1 reveals that, at least during these elections, women tend to receive slightly more central party money than men once we account for factors like incumbency, competitiveness, and geographic location. As for H2, we find no evidence that the Conservatives disproportionately favour men over women when it comes to central party transfers. Despite not having a centrally administered fund specifically designed to support women like the New Democrats, the Conservatives provide just as much additional financial support to the women it nominates as does the NDP.

Overall, our data reveal that women are not overtly penalized by central party elites when it comes to financial transfers. At the same time, however, our results clearly show that, outside of modest support from the Liberals, parties are not systematically utilizing central party transfers as a means to support women’s local campaigns either. In fact, party approaches to financial transfers are somewhat inconsistent, fluctuating between elections and across competitive situations. Other factors, such as region, the amount of money the central party has to distribute, and local competitiveness appear more consistently important than do considerations of candidate gender. This lack of overt and meaningful financial support, however, suggests that Canadian parties have an opportunity. If they are truly committed to producing more representative legislatures, using central party funding to support women candidates may a practical option. The same, of course, applies to the state as many countries (France, Portugal, Ireland, etc.) have found success in developing gender-targeted public financing regimes (Shin and Kwon, 2023).

As we end it is worth raising a number of opportunities for future research. First, uncovering the motivations of party strategists is an important next step. While we show that women are not overtly punished, research suggests that women may need more resources than men to combat stereotypes held by the electorate. Understanding why parties do not provide additional support to women, perhaps through interviews with party elites, is therefore necessary. Second, our analysis is limited to the election period. Parties, while more dormant, still exist in-between elections (Pruysers, 2016). Understanding how parties transfer funds in the inter-election period, and whether different patterns exist during this period, is a worthwhile next step. Third, gender is not the only relevant descriptive characteristic. Future research may consider whether central party funds are used to support other diverse candidates (i.e., racialized candidates, Indigenous candidates, etc.). Finally, future research might consider adopting central party financial transfers as a measure of gender equality within parties. While measures such as the number of women nominated can be problematic (i.e., women can be placed in unwinnable districts, lower on party lists, etc.), objective and verifiable measures of support for women candidates in the form of financial transfers may prove useful alternatives in this regard.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Rob Currie-Wood

Notes

Author biographies

Rob Currie-Wood is the Grant Notley Memorial Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Political Science at the University of Alberta.

Scott Pruysers is an associate professor of political science at Dalhousie University.

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