Why We're Wrong About Nearly Everything by Bobby Duffy

Author:Bobby Duffy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2019-11-25T16:00:00+00:00

Figure 24. Accuracy was mixed on the proportion of female politicians: people in a number of countries were very accurate, whereas others significantly overestimated and underestimated.

A majority of the public do see the benefits of more equal representation: 61 per cent of people across twenty-seven countries agreed that things would work better if women held more positions of responsibility in government and business. This is even the view of a majority of men, although this was one of the few questions in which men and women had a notably different perspective, with only 53 per cent of men agreeing versus 68 per cent of women. In many countries, including Germany, Japan, South Korea, and, most markedly, Russia (where only 26 per cent of men agreed), it was only a minority of men that agreed. In that context, it is perhaps clear why (mostly male) politicians in a number of countries don’t take bolder actions on equal representation.

Politicians are constantly calculating and balancing their appeal to different groups, not just between genders, but across all sorts of demographics. With sluggish economic growth and wage stagnation for large swathes of the population in much of the West, one group that has been particularly courted in recent years is the economically ‘left behind’. Giving a sense that political parties and leaders ‘feel the pain’ this group has experienced has been a key objective of most election campaigns since the 2008 financial crash, and that included the 2016 US presidential election.

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