Where do female Conservatives stand? A cross-national analysis of the issue positions and ideological placement of female right-wing candidates

Many right-wing parties have attempted to increase their share of female representatives to appeal to women in the electorate. Underlying this is the assumption that women will offer a distinct perspective to the party. Using a comparative dataset of male and female candidates of Conservative and Christian Democratic parties across 21 European and Anglo-Saxon countries, we show this is the case. Female candidates in right-wing parties are less right wing than male candidates, both in terms of their overall ideology and their issue positioning. Perhaps as a consequence, female candidates perceive a greater distance to their own party than male candidates