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Wearing the Pants(suit)? Gendered Leadership Styles, Partisanship, and Candidate Evaluation in the 2016 U.S. Election

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 April 2021

Rachel Bernhard Open the ORCID record for Rachel Bernhard [Opens in a new window]
Rachel Bernhard*
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University of California, Davis and Berkeley
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Abstract

Do messages that evoke a gendered leadership style affect attitudes toward well-known candidates? If so, among what sorts of voters? I show that voters’ evaluations of national politicians, including Hillary Clinton, can be influenced by presenting candidates as stereotypically masculine or feminine leaders. In two survey experiments of California registered voters (n = 1,800 each) conducted at the height of the 2016 presidential election campaign, I find that, on average, voters seemed to prefer both male and female politicians more when they were described as having feminine leadership styles. However, clear heterogeneous treatment effects occurred: Democrats, liberals, and women from all parties evaluated politicians more favorably when they were described as feminine; Republicans, conservatives, and voters for Donald Trump evaluated the same candidates less favorably when described as feminine. The findings have implications for scholarship that links gender stereotyping, partisanship, and ideology to voter behavior.

Keywords

Gender stereotypesleadership stylepartisanshipcandidate evaluationspresidential elections
Type
Research Article
Information
Politics & Gender , Volume 18 , Issue 2 , June 2022 , pp. 513 - 545
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

Thanks are owed to Jack Citrin and the Institute of Governmental Studies for their support of this research and to Nichole Bauer, Deborah Brooks, Amanda Jo Friesen, Danny Hayes, Mirya Holman, Chris Karpowitz, Jennifer Lawless, Sparsha Saha, the GPP Faculty Writing Group, and the participants in the Berkeley Political Behavior Workshop for feedback on earlier drafts. Special thanks are due to Sean Freeder and Jessica Preece for helpful discussions throughout the project and to Mia Costa and Soledad Prillaman for sharing code.

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