Networks and the Size of the Gender Gap in Politician Performance Across Job Duties

Women across the Global South have made large strides in breaking into historically male arenas, including politics. Like private sector work and non-profit development, woman in politics face barriers that can undermine their performance relative to men. Focusing on women politicians, we argue that performance gender gaps of different magnitudes will appear across different job duties, since job duties differ in terms of barriers posed to women. In particular, where woman politicians are excluded in politician networks, duties requiring interaction with fellow politicians (e.g., legislative activities) may exhibit larger gender gaps as compared to duties that can be undertaken independently (e.g., constituency services and development). We find support for this argument when comparing women and men politicians' performance across samples of up to 50 subnational Ugandan legislatures (where 1/3 of seats are reserved for women). Using original network data, we find that women are significantly more peripheral in professional networks, and that this network peripherality drives gender gaps in duties requiring more interaction with fellow politicians, but not independently-performed duties. Importantly, friendship centrality is no substitute for professional centrality when it comes to job duty performance: by term end women are not more peripheral in personal networks, which are not as correlated with job duty performance gaps. Finally, education disparities across gender also contribute to the gender gap for duties requiring more intricate understanding of rules and procedures (e.g., monitoring public services, legislative duties). Moving forward, advocacy organizations may consider holding trainings and simulations with politicians on performing (especially intricate) duties in ways that might encourage cross-gender professional network ties.