Intersectional Discrimination and Candidate Selection: Evidence from a Lab Experiment in Kenya
UBC Political Science’s Distinguished Speaker Series will host Kimuli Kasara, Associate Professor of Political Science at Columbia University, for a talk titled “Intersectional Discrimination and Candidate Selection: Evidence from a Lab Experiment in Kenya” on Wednesday, November 8.
Lunch will be served at 11:45 am in Buchanan C403. The lecture will start at 12:15 pm and wrap up at 1:45pm.
ABSTRACT
Discrimination occurs when similarly qualified people are treated differently because of their identity. Discrimination is intersectional if discrimination on one dimension affects discrimination on another. We theorize about the conditions under which individuals discriminate on two dimensions and offer an account of how and when individual biases might become systemic ones.
We conducted a candidate selection lab experiment in Kenya to understand how three institutional conditions affect intersectional discrimination: (1) the presence of gender quotas; (2) objective information on candidate performance; (3) provisions for collective decision making in diverse groups.
We find evidence of discrimination against both women and outgroups in candidate selection choices. We also find some evidence that patterns of discrimination are sensitive to these institutional conditions. However we find no strong evidence of intersectional discrimination in any of the eight institutional conditions that are formed from our experimental variations.
Our results confirm the presence of multidimensional discrimination, but suggest limited gains from focusing on interactive aspects of identity in this setting.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Kimuli Kasara (Ph.D., Stanford, 2006) is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Columbia University. She studies ethnic demography, political violence, and distributive politics. She has published in the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, and the Journal of Politics. Her current research is on how economic and demographic change affect politicians’ responses to ethnic and economic heterogeneity historically worldwide as well as in post-independence Africa.
