The Curious Case of Theresa May and the Public That Did Not Rally: Gendered Reactions to Terrorist Attacks Can Cause Slumps Not Bumps

Abstract

Terrorist attacks routinely produce rallies for incumbent men in the executive office. With scarce cases, there has been little consideration of terrorism’s consequences for evaluations of sitting women executives. Fusing research on rallies with scholarship on women in politics, we derive a gender-revised framework wherein the public will be less inclined to rally around women when terrorists attack. A critical case is UK Prime Minister Theresa May, a right-leaning incumbent with security experience. Employing a natural experiment, we demonstrate that the public fails to rally after the 2017 Manchester Arena attack. Instead, evaluations of May decrease, with sharp declines among those holding negatives views about women. We further show May’s party loses votes in areas closer to the attack. We then find support for the argument in a multinational test. We conclude that conventional theory on rally events requires revision: women leaders cannot count on rallies following major terrorist attacks.

Violence Against Politicians, Negative Campaigning, and Public Opinion: Evidence From Poland

“…We estimate the effect of violence against politicians by relying on an Unexpected Events during Survey Design framework (UESD; Muñoz et al, 2020; Balcells & Torrats-Espinosa, 2018; Holman, Merolla and Zechmeister, 2021). To gauge changes in public opinion, we compare vote intentions of individuals interviewed just before and just after the violent attack.…”

The complicated but solvable threat–politics relationship

“…The real-life experience of threat, such as the experience of a terrorist attack or a pandemic, seems to have different effects on political preferences than the dominant perspective would suggest. Self-reported terrorism threat is associated with conservatism [4], whereas exposure to the 2017 Manchester Arena attack decreased support for Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May [5]. Exposure to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) increased support for mainstream candidates in the USA and France [6], showing that the pandemic reduced support for both more extreme left-wing and right-wing candidates.…”

“…People who are threatened by COVID-19 may turn to mainstream candidates because people think they are better suited for addressing unknown pandemic effects [6]. And people who are threatened by terrorism may turn away from a conservative female leader because, as Holman and colleagues [5] suggest, sexist people do not see female leaders as addressing the threat.…”

This One’s for the Boys: How Gendered Political Socialization Limits Girls’ Political Ambition and Interest

“…School-based “political” activities also highlight competitive contests, such as student council elections, mock trial, and debate teams. Children’s social studies curricula emphasize men’s contributions to US politics (Lay et al 2021; Schocker and Woyshner 2013), 2 and stereotypes of leaders focus more on male-typical traits like being a strong leader and being assertive (Bauer 2020; Holman, Merolla, and Zechmeister 2021; Koenig et al 2011) that overlap greatly with agentic stereotypes of men (Eagly, Wood, and Diekman 2000). 3 Additionally, media coverage confirms that men hold most political leadership roles in the United States (Center for American Women and Politics 2021); shows that these men engage in power-seeking behaviors as opposed to collaborative, cooperative, and communal-oriented behaviors (Schneider et al 2016); and characterizes conflict, scandal, and gridlock as central features of the political process.…”