Legislative vs. Executive Political Offices: How Gender Stereotypes Can Disadvantage Women in Either Office

Sweet-Cushman, Jennie

doi:10.1007/s11109-021-09721-x

Cited by 25 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…Growing scholarships suggest that women politicians receive their own distinct stereotypes. For example, Schneider and Bos (2014) find that gender stereotypical traits ascribed to women politicians are distinct from those ascribed to women as such; voters also hold different expectations for women legislative and executive officeholders, suggesting more subtypes for women politicians (Sweet-Cushman 2021). Another possible explanation might be that voters do not link women candidates with a “soft” image as women prosecutors may strive to overcome gender stereotypes by behaving tougher than men.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How U.S. Voters Elect Prosecutors: Evidence from a Conjoint Experiment

Sung

2022

Political Research Quarterly

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Do U.S. voters care about the policy positions of a candidate when choosing prosecutors? Conventional wisdom suggests the public favors punitiveness and that prosecutorial elections are apolitical. I argue that voters do care about the policy positions of prosecutors, but different information environments induce different voting behaviors. Using a conjoint experiment across four information settings, I show how policy congruence plays an important role in shaping voter’s decisions when candidates’ policy information is available. When policy information is sparse, voters take cues to infer candidates’ political leanings even in nonpartisan or low-information electoral environments. Contrary to the dominant view that the public favors punitiveness, my results suggest that the public is not unequivocally harsh. These findings speak to the possible benefits that society can reap from increasing the level of information available in prosecutorial elections. The findings also call into question the prevalent view that elections ought to compel prosecutors to adopt tough-on-crime stances that result in a highly incarcerated populace.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How U.S. Voters Elect Prosecutors: Evidence from a Conjoint Experiment

Sung

2022

Political Research Quarterly

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“…Women face a gender-role incongruity problem where women who violate feminine expectations by engaging in stereotypically masculine behaviors run the risk of a backlash for not being “nice enough” (Eagly & Karau, 2002; Sweet-Cushman, 2022); but, female candidates need to engage in masculine behaviors to overcome the perception that they lack the masculine traits needed in leaders (Bauer, 2020b). Female candidates often consider how feminine and masculine stereotypes shape the perceptions voters form of them (Dittmar, 2015) and adjust their strategies to minimize the potential for gender bias and to overcome the perception that they lack masculine traits (Bauer & Santia, 2022).…”

Section: Gender Stereotypes and Campaign Negativitymentioning

confidence: 99%

How Women Attack: Candidate Reliance on Feminine and Masculine Traits in Campaign Negativity

Bauer

Hewitt

Labbe

2023

Communication Research

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We develop a framework to identify how women use negative messages in political campaigns. We argue that women will be more likely to use contrast negativity, messages that include a negative message against an opponent and a positive message about the candidate sponsoring the ad, rather than attack negativity, messages that only criticize an opponent. We also identify how feminine and masculine traits emerge in negativity—a strategy we call gendered trait negativity. We analyze gendered trait negativity in television ads from the Wesleyan Media Project (WMP) for House, Senate, and gubernatorial races from 2010 to 2018. Using logistic regression models, we find that women use contrast messages more than attack messages when running against a man. Second, we find that women are more likely to highlight feminine traits over masculine traits in negative messages when their opponent is a man relative to when their opponent is a woman.

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“…Of the 16 total women in the election, only three ran as Senate incumbents, and only three ran as Republicans. This partisan skew reflects the wide partisan gap in women’s representation that favors Democrats (Thomsen 2014), and the incumbent imbalance reinforces the difficulties women have in running for higher levels of political office (Sweet-Cushman 2021).…”

Section: Data Collectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Second, this research also investigates whether the news media provide voters with the information voters need to make decisions at the ballot (Bauer 2020a). Even though voters receive political experience coverage about women they also receive coverage that reinforces feminine stereotypes that can undermine perceptions of women as leaders (Bauer 2015; Ditonto, Hamilton, and Redlawsk 2014; Ditonto 2017; Sweet-Cushman 2021). The news media are frequently the best equipped vehicle to provide voters with information about political candidates during an election given the media’s important role in shaping public knowledge (Schudson 1998; Graber 1988; Peterson 2019) but the news media might sell female candidates short.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Selling them Short? Differences in News Coverage of Female and Male Candidate Qualifications

Bauer

Taylor

2022

Political Research Quarterly

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We draw on research from gender stereotypes and mass communication to develop and test an innovative theoretical framework of implicit and explicit gender framing. This framework delineates how and when coverage in newspapers will report on female candidates differently than male candidates. Implicit gender frames subtly draw on masculine stereotypes to reinforce patriarchal power structures through their coverage of political candidates. Explicit gender frames are the overtly sexist “hair, hemlines, and husband” coverage women receive more frequently relative to men. We argue that the print news media will be more likely to rely on implicit gender frames to elucidate differences between women and men running for political office. Using an exhaustive content analysis of Senate campaign news coverage, we find important differences in the coverage of women and men running against one another. We also find the use of explicit gender frames to be especially common in all-female races. These differences in coverage, especially in all-women contests, can perpetuate stereotypic beliefs that women lack the qualifications needed for political office among voters, and stymie women’s progress toward parity in representation.

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Legislative vs. Executive Political Offices: How Gender Stereotypes Can Disadvantage Women in Either Office

Cited by 25 publications

References 51 publications

How U.S. Voters Elect Prosecutors: Evidence from a Conjoint Experiment

How U.S. Voters Elect Prosecutors: Evidence from a Conjoint Experiment

How Women Attack: Candidate Reliance on Feminine and Masculine Traits in Campaign Negativity

Selling them Short? Differences in News Coverage of Female and Male Candidate Qualifications

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