The Effect of the #MeToo Movement on Political Engagement and Ambition in 2018

Abstract

Conventional wisdom holds that the #MeToo movement increased awareness of sexual harassment and drove sympathizers, particularly women, to increased participation in the 2018 midterm elections. In this paper, we assess whether #MeToo increased awareness of sexual harassment, as well as whether #MeToo increased self-reported interest in various forms of political participation. Using an original dataset from October 2018, we find that although the #MeToo movement increased awareness and concern about sexual harassment and sexual assault, it did not affect interest in political participation among most Americans. We also find that the people most likely to report being aware of and mobilized by the movement were Democrats, those with high levels of political interest, and those who have personally experienced sexual harassment in professional settings. Surprisingly, in most of our models, women were no more likely to report that #MeToo increased their interest in participating than men. The results suggest that the primary effect of #MeToo may have been increasing the salience of sexual harassment and interest in political participation in 2018 among those who possessed the resources to participate and who were ideologically predisposed to support the movement’s goals from the beginning.

Introduction to the Symposium on “The Role of Gender in the 2018 Midterm Elections”

“…What effect did this have on voters? Jeremiah Castle et al (2020) find that the #MeToo movement increased concerns about the issue of sexual harassment but did not have a widespread mobilizing impact on American voters, or American women as a whole. Instead, it mobilized a key subset of Democratic voters—particularly those with high levels attention to the campaign and personal experiences of sexual harassment—and heighted their nascent levels of political ambition.…”

Media Discrimination and Gender Differences in Political Ambition in a Laboratory Experiment

“…As discussed, Italy has recently seen a dramatic rise in the number of women elected, yet media and political stereotypes continue to be heavily masculinised (IPU 2021a; Belluati 2020). Recent politically mobilising events such as the #MeToo movement (Castle et al 2020) may contribute to making young people more aware of and averse to gender discrimination. It is therefore possible that young people in Italy today are particularly literate in de-constructing media discrimination due to its continued prevalence and are galvanised by the political efforts to bring more women into political representation.…”

Reassessing the relationship between homophobia and political participation

“…Morin-Chassé et al (2017) demonstrate the overreporting of self-reported participation. While the levels of participation may be imprecise in our data, we are confident that we can compare levels of political engagement across groups of theoretical interest for our hypothesis tests (see Castle et al, 2020).…”