Gender, Institutions and Politics.

Summary This dissertation aims to explore the link between institutions, gender and politics. It seeks to answer three questions: Can institutions undo gender norms? Would institutions be more egalitarian if they were led by women? Why are women absent from positions of power? The first chapter of this dissertation aims to explore the role of institutions in creating gender norms. The norm studied is that a woman must earn less than her husband. Using, the division of Germany as a natural experiment, we show that East German egalitarian institutions undid gender. After reunification, an East German woman can earn more than her husband without increasing her hours of domestic work, risking divorce or withdrawing from the labor market. In contrast, in West Germany, these behaviors are still observable.The second chapter examines whether institutions would be more egalitarian with women in charge. In particular, we investigate whether female politicians have the same priorities as their male colleagues. The context studied is the French Parliament during the period 2001-2017. By combining text analysis methods with exogenous variations in the gender of politicians, this chapter shows that, relative to their male colleagues, female politicians in the National Assembly are more advocates for women in the population. The issue where gender differences in parliamentary activity are most pronounced is precisely that of gender equality, followed by issues related to children and health. Men are more active on military issues. We show that these differences stem from the individual interests of legislators. Finally, we replicate these results in the Senate by exploiting the introduction of a reform that imposed parity.The third chapter looks at the reasons behind the under-representation of women in positions of power. It seeks to determine whether, in a context where politicians are predominantly men, the "incumbency bonus" in elections reduces the number of women elected. The context studied is that of municipalities of less than 1000 inhabitants in France. We show that, contrary to what one might expect, when politicians are not eligible for re-election, the share of women elected does not increase. This is because it is more difficult for a woman to replace a woman than to replace a man.