Female candidates are less likely to persist in national elections following defeat compared to local elections.

​Impact of Party Gatekeeping: At the national level, party nomination processes and financial barriers disproportionately affect women.

Strengths

• Nuanced Findings: The paper identifies distinct gender dynamics across national and local elections in Taiwan, highlighting an important intersection between gender and electoral level.

• Broader Implications: The findings have relevance beyond Taiwan, with clear applications to other countries with similar political systems, making the research potentially generalizable.
  
  

Strengths

• Limitations Acknowledged: The paper is transparent about its limitations, including sample size issues and the need for further research on specific mechanisms. This reflects a strong understanding of research design and methodology.

Sample Size Limitation:

Problem: small sample sizes for national-level elections, which affects the precision of results, particularly regarding the gender gap in persistence (H1).

Suggestion: Consider exploring alternative methods to bolster statistical power, such as extending the study period to include more electoral cycles or make it a comparative study (e.g. South Korea, US)
 

Mechanisms driving these outcomes? s

• Party gatekeeping, financial barriers, and personal networks.

• Suggestion: Mixed methods with qualitative (author suggests interviews) Add a case study will make it stronger
   

Broader Theoretical Integration:

• The study could be more explicitly connected to broader theories of political ambition, gender and politics, and electoral behavior