From Gender Roles to Gendered Politics? The Impact of Flemish Voters’ Gender Role Conceptions on the Fortune of Female Candidates

The starting point of many studies on gender and politics has been that men are overrepresented in politics, whereas women constitute only a small minority of elected officials. This trend is even more apparent for the highest political leadership functions. The underrepresentation of women could be linked to the persistent existence of general gender stereotypes. There is an inconsistency between the predominantly communal qualities (e.g. nice, soft and compassionate) that people associate with women and the predominantly agentic qualities (e.g. assertive and competitive) that they believe are required for good political leadership (Eagly & Carli, 2007). Voters may hold the idea that women should be socialized towards a gender role that is more passive and private, whereas men are oriented towards leadership, public roles and autonomy (Brownmiller, 2013). This cultural mismatch, or role incongruity, between women and the perceived demands of leadership clearly underlies biased evaluations of female candidates (Eagly & Karau, 2002). Research on women’s political underrepresentation has pointed to how these traditional views on gender roles among voters might work against female candidates by influencing how voters perceive female candidates (e.g. Dolan, 2014; Huddy & Terkildsen, 1993). For example, stereotypes about traits (women are seen as more compassionate) and stereotypes about emotional strength (women are seen as weaker) all reinforce the belief that women would not perform as well as men in politics (Falk & Kenski, 2006). Evidently, traditional conceptions of masculinity and femininity have an impact on which political leaders voters prefer. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to uncover how traditional gender role conceptions come into play in the political sphere and affect voters’ perceptions of and attitudes about female candidates. Based on an experimental study and a follow-up survey, conducted among a representative sample of the Flemish (Belgian) population, we are able to make the connection between voters’ gendered attitudes (independent variable) and their evaluations of male and female candidates’ capacity for political leadership (dependent variable). By contributing to the knowledge of important factors that influence the preference for certain political leaders, this paper comes to the heart of what the proposed panel on the political psychology of choosing leaders aims to do.