Think Female Leader, Think…? A Cross-Country Comparison of the Stereotypes of Male and Female Politicians

Gender stereotypes are often argued to contribute to female underrepresentation in politics. These stereotypes could be disadvantageous for women in politics, as most of the qualities sought for in political leaders are stereotypically associated with men and not with women. However, social psychology scholarship found that people not always apply a stereotype to every member of the overall group. Sometimes, a ‘subtype’ exists, which is linked to very different characteristics. For example, professional women and business women are not thought to possess stereotypical female traits such as warmth and emotionality. Likewise, feminine traits might not be ascribed to female politicians, if female politicians constitute a subtype. This study focuses on the content of gender stereotypes for politicians and tests whether the ‘regular’ gender stereotypes are also applied to political actors. It does so using Germany as a context, where stereotypes should arguably be weak, due to relatively high numbers of women in parliament and the presence of a highly prominent female leader in Merkel. The gendered political stereotypes are studied by means of two experiments: one in which respondents report on the traits they believe are widely associated with a specific social group and one novel experimental setup (an innovative application of a list-experiment) which allows respondents to mask socially undesirable answers. These two experiments not only provide us with the answers as to which gender stereotypes are applied to politicians and what the impact is of contextual factors, but also how social desirability affects the reporting on stereotypes people hold.