Female under-representation and campaign financing

The political representation of women is an issue that has been gaining ground around the world, with the creation of various international mechanisms that seek to increase gender equality. Despite these efforts, this representation is still low in several countries, including Brazil. Several hypotheses about the causes of this under-representation have been put forward in the literature, including the unequal funding of electoral campaigns by men and women. This work was born out of an effort to understand the role that campaign financing plays in women's political representation. We analysed the 2014 elections to the Legislative Assembly of Rio Grande do Sul in terms of the distribution of private and public funds in the electoral campaigns of 605 candidates.