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Why Women Earn High Marks: Examining the Role of Partisanship and Gender in Political Evaluations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 May 2021

Lindsey Cormack Open the ORCID record for Lindsey Cormack [Opens in a new window]  and
Kristyn L. Karl Open the ORCID record for Kristyn L. Karl [Opens in a new window]
Lindsey Cormack
Affiliation:
Stevens Institute of Technology
Kristyn L. Karl
Affiliation:
Stevens Institute of Technology
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Abstract

We present the results of a randomized survey experiment demonstrating that the public evaluates women politicians more highly than men across multiple characteristic assessments. This finding is consistent with a recent wave of research indicating greater preferences for women politicians. Which respondents rate women politicians more highly, and why? We find that women and younger voters do not account for the greater marks given to women politicians. Instead, respondent partisanship and the presumed partisanship of the politician account for a great deal of our findings, with gender playing a complicating role. Democratic and Republican respondents are apt to project their own partisanship onto politicians, and across both parties, we find higher assessments for co-partisan politicians and for women politicians. On the whole, women politicians are evaluated on par with or significantly higher than men politicians across six characteristics, scoring especially well relative to men when politicians are presumed to be members of the opposing party and when traditionally feminine characteristics are assessed.

Keywords

Women in politicssurvey experimentpublic opinion
Type
Research Article
Information
Politics & Gender , Volume 18 , Issue 3 , September 2022 , pp. 768 - 797
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Women, Gender, and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association

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Footnotes

The authors would like to thank the participants at the 2019 Southern Political Science Association Annual Conference and the 2018 American Political Science Association Annual Conference for their feedback on earlier versions of this work. We also thank the College of Arts and Letters at Stevens Institute of Technology for the funding to create and run the surveys used herein.

References

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