IdEP Junior Seminar, Alessandra Moresi - "The Impact of the 2017 Women's March on Female Political Representation"

Can female-led protests boost women’s political participation? This paper examines the impact of the largest single-day progressive feminist protest in U.S. history. Using a difference-in-differences design based on proximity, I find that the protests increased conservative women’s candidacy in Republican primaries, but this did not lead to electoral wins. Conversely, the Democratic Party was better able to coordinate women candidates, irrespective of distance to protests. These women ran and won in both the primaries and general elections, securing overall gains in the midterm elections and boosting female representation in Congress.