Does Female Incumbency Reduce Gender Bias in Elections? Evidence from Chile

Shair‐Rosenfield, Sarah; Hinojosa, Magda

doi:10.1177/1065912914550044

Cited by 55 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…In presidencies, many women elected have been spouses of former presidents or had charismatic male patrons (Jalalzai 2016;Jalalzai and dos Santos 2015;Ríos-Tobar 2008). We know less about the impact of public opinion on representation; scholars present conflicting evidence on gendered leadership preferences in the Americas (Aguilar, Cunow, and Desposato 2015;Batista Pereira 2015;Morgan 2015;Morgan and Buice 2013;Shair-Rosenfield and Hinojosa 2014). We have yet to understand the role of stereotypes.…”

Section: Gender Stereotypes Of Leaders In the Americas: Causes And Comentioning

confidence: 91%

Refusing to know a woman’s place: the causes and consequences of rejecting stereotypes of women politicians in the Americas

Smith

Warming

Hennings

2016

Politics, Groups, and Identities

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What are the sources and effects of gendered leadership stereotypes for women's representation? We explore the role of stereotypes in shaping public attitudes toward women's representation using AmericasBarometer survey data from 25 countries. We report three key results. First, the modal respondent in almost every country rejects gendered leadership stereotypes, affirming that women and men leaders are equally qualified on corruption and the economy. This holds even after we attempt to account for social desirability bias. Second, there are significant individual-and country-level determinants of stereotyping. In countries with higher women's representation and labor force participation but without gender quotas, citizens are more likely to choose pro-female and neutral responses over pro-male stereotypes. At the individual level, those rejecting stereotypes are less authoritarian, more supportive of labor market equality, and more leftist than those reporting pro-female stereotypes. Third, the consequences for representation vary by partisanship and country context. Pro-female leadership stereotypes boost support for women presidential candidates and for legislative gender quotas, but they matter less among copartisans of women candidates, and they matter more when women candidates are viable but gendered outsiders. Those rejecting leadership stereotypes altogether are less supportive of quotas. ARTICLE HISTORYWhat are the nature and consequences of gendered leadership stereotypes in developing democracies? We address this question in the case of the Americas, where the number of women elected to presidential office has risen dramatically in the past decade, yet women remain substantially underrepresented at all levels. Growing bodies of work examine the institutional causes and policy consequences of women's representation in Latin America; at the mass level, scholars examine public opinion toward women leaders in the abstract, and how candidate gender affects vote choice. Yet, the connection from mass attitudes such as stereotypes to women's representation in the region has yet to be addressed.Scholars of the US show that gendered leadership stereotypes remain prevalent but are declining, and in recent elections only indirectly affect vote choice; some suggest they do not matter at all (Bauer 2015a, 2015b; Brooks 2013; Ditonto, Hamilton, and Redlawsk 2014; Dolan 2014; Dolan and Lynch 2015). We analyze 2012 public opinion data to understand citizens' stereotypes of the political capabilities of men and women politicians. We make two advances over prior work. First, we examine the extent to which developing democracies exhibit similar gendered leadership stereotypes as in the US. There are reasons to expect differences. For instance, the Americas contain a great range in levels of development, and development is associated feminist attitudes more generally (e.g., Banaszak and Plutzer 1993;Inglehart and Norris 2003;Morgan and Buice 2013;Paxton and Hughes 2007). Second, we distinguish theoretically and empiricall...

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Section: Gender Stereotypes Of Leaders In the Americas: Causes And Comentioning

confidence: 91%

Refusing to know a woman’s place: the causes and consequences of rejecting stereotypes of women politicians in the Americas

Smith

Warming

Hennings

2016

Politics, Groups, and Identities

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“…According to Rosenfield, women incumbents can persuade voters and parties to re-elect them (Rosenfield, 2012, p. 577). Such a finding is further supported by the case of Latin America (Rosenfield & Hinojosa, 2014). However, a different situation has been seen in Aceh, where a female incumbent lost the electoral contestation, as will be explained below.…”

Section: Incumbents In Electionsmentioning

confidence: 65%

“…The literature has argued that women incumbents enjoy specific advantages that ease their re-election (Rosenfield & Hinojosa, 2014). Being incumbents allows women candidates to show their leadership capabilities, and as such, enables them to address public pessimism.…”

Section: Gender and Islamic Communitarianismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Incumbency Disadvantages and Populism in Indonesian Local Elections: Case Studies of Banda Aceh and Takalar

Nurlinah

Darwin

Haryanto

2019

Power, Conflict and Democracy Journal

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This article seeks to contribute an understanding of how populism informs incumbency disadvantages in elections. Incumbency has been seen as highly beneficial in elections, and many studies have found that incumbent candidates enjoy significant access to resources with which they can campaign. This article, however, finds a different reality, with incumbents in Banda Aceh and Takalar experiencing electoral defeat. In both areas, extensive field studies before and after the local elections found that incumbents’ unwillingness to adopt a populist approach during their terms influenced voters’ choices. The main argument of this article is that, in Indonesia’s local democracies, incumbency has created space for varied models of populism, including the communitarian populism found in Aceh and Takalar. Such populism has emerged from specific socio-cultural contexts at the local level that have shaped voters’ preferences. The socio-cultural context of communal societies such as Aceh and Takalar has informed the truth value through which elites, policies, and phenomena are judged. Ultimately, this communitarian populism cannot be separated from the public’s desires for elections. These two cases offer a profile of how communitarian societies respond to and shape local populism in Indonesia.

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“…In a literature declaring incumbency advantages to be an alternative which positively resulted in a successful female candidate in the next election. The incumbent position provides an opportunity for women candidates to demonstrate their capability as women in leadership positions, further proving it affects the party's views regarding pessimism about the chances of election of women candidates and their effects on other parties as well as proving their capacity in public [10]. In the end, however, different facts have occurred in the Banda Aceh elections which show that female incumbency cannot work to influence both the party and the voters.…”

Section: Policy Populist and Unpopulist Programmentioning

confidence: 94%

Incumbency Disadvantages (Local Election and Populism in Indonesia)

Nurlinah¹,

Darwin²,

Haryanto³

2018

Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Social and Political Sciences (ICSPS 2017)

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Abstract-Incumbent is a very favorable political position on the election. The results of the study in many kinds of literature suggest that a strong candidate in the election is the incumbent because it has resources and can use its position to campaign. This paper shows a different fact, where the incumbent experienced a defeat in local elections by raising cases in Aceh and South Sulawesi in the 2017 election. In two areas where field research was conducted intensively before and after the local election showed that incumbent policies that did not integrate with populist policies during local heads affected voters choices. The main argument in this paper explains that a policy that is not populist can cause incumbency disadvantage. The more populist policies carried out by the incumbent, the more likely it is to win. This article concludes that populism is a major trend in local elections so that candidates without welfare and pragmatic issues seem difficult to win voters and win elections.

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Does Female Incumbency Reduce Gender Bias in Elections? Evidence from Chile

Cited by 55 publications

References 39 publications

Refusing to know a woman’s place: the causes and consequences of rejecting stereotypes of women politicians in the Americas

Refusing to know a woman’s place: the causes and consequences of rejecting stereotypes of women politicians in the Americas

Incumbency Disadvantages and Populism in Indonesian Local Elections: Case Studies of Banda Aceh and Takalar

Incumbency Disadvantages (Local Election and Populism in Indonesia)

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