Naming the Gap: Gender-Targeted Information and the Vote for Women

Last registered on September 21, 2026
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Naming the Gap: Gender-Targeted Information and the Vote for Women
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0019677
Initial registration date
September 09, 2026

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
September 21, 2026, 8:06 AM EDT

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Locations

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Primary Investigator

Name
Amanda de Albuquerque
Affiliation
Rede A Ponte
Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

Additional Trial Information

Status
On going
Start date
2026-07-01
End date
2026-12-31
Keywords
Electoral, Gender
Additional Keywords
JEL code(s)
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
Women hold just 18.5 percent of seats in the Brazilian Federal Senate. This project tests whether a short digital ad naming that gap, "Did you know women are more than 50 percent of the population but only 16 percent of Congress? Think about that when you vote," changes vote share for female Senate candidates, and whether the effect depends on which audience receives the message. In 398 municipalities across the states of Maranhão and Ceará, matched by nearest neighbor on local covariates within state, municipalities are randomly assigned to one of four arms, an ad targeted to women, an ad targeted to men, an ad shown to all adults regardless of sex, or no advertising. Prior evidence that this message shifts votes comes from the 2024 Brazilian municipal elections (De Albuquerque, Finan, Jha, Karpuska and Trebbi 2025, NBER Working Paper 33859); this project tests whether targeting the message by gender changes who it moves. The primary outcome is municipal-level vote share for female Senate candidates in the 2026 election, compared across arms.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
de Albuquerque, Amanda. 2026. "Naming the Gap: Gender-Targeted Information and the Vote for Women." AEA RCT Registry. September 21. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.19677-1.0
Sponsors & Partners

Partner

Name
Rede A Ponte
Type
ngo
URL
https://redeaponte.org/
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
Treated municipalities receive a digital ad on Instagram, delivered through Meta Ads Manager, informing residents that women hold only 18.5 percent of seats in the Brazilian Federal Senate. The ad text reads "Did you know women are more than 50 percent of the population but only 16 percent of Congress? Think about that when you vote." Depending on the treatment arm a municipality is assigned to, the ad targets Instagram users who self-identify as women, users who self-identify as men, or all adult users regardless of sex, always restricted to residents of the treated municipality and over 18 years. It runs for one week, from September 25 to October 1, 2026, ending before the electoral silence period ahead of the October 4 general election. Control municipalities receive no advertising from this campaign.
Intervention Start Date
2026-09-25
Intervention End Date
2026-10-01

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Municipal-level vote share for female candidates to the Federal Senate in the October 2026 general election, compared across the four arms.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
Computed from official results published by the Tribunal Superior Eleitoral (TSE) after the election. For each municipality, we sum the valid votes received by all female candidates for Federal Senate and divide by the total valid votes cast for Federal Senate in that municipality.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Daily ad delivery metrics during the campaign flight, reach, impressions, and engagement rate, by arm and targeted gender segment. Pairwise comparisons of the treatment effect across the women-targeted, men-targeted, and all-adults arms. Heterogeneity of the treatment effect by baseline municipal covariates.
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)
Delivery metrics come directly from Meta Ads Manager reporting at the ad-set level for each treated municipality. Pairwise arm comparisons and heterogeneity analyses use the same baseline covariates measured prior to randomization.

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
The sample frame comprises 398 municipalities in the states of Maranhão and Ceará. Within each state, municipalities were grouped into nearest-neighbor blocks on the first principal component of municipal covariates and randomly assigned to one of four arms, a women-targeted ad, a men-targeted ad, an all-adults ad, or no advertising (control), in an approximate ratio of 100 women-targeted, 100 men-targeted, 50 all-adults, and 148 control. Two municipalities, the state capitals of Maranhão and Ceará, were assigned to the all-adults arm by design rather than by random draw. Treated municipalities receive the ad described above, targeted according to their assigned arm. Control municipalities receive no advertising.
Experimental Design Details
Not available
Randomization Method
Randomization was conducted in office using Stata, with a fixed random seed for reproducibility, not a public lottery.
Randomization Unit
Municipality (município).
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
398 municipalities.
Sample size: planned number of observations
398 municipalities.
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
148 municipalities control, 100 municipalities women-targeted ad, 100 municipalities men-targeted ad, 50 municipalities all-adults ad (48 randomly assigned, 2 assigned by design).
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
IRB Approval Date
IRB Approval Number
Analysis Plan