Beyond gender: The influence of shared partisan and social identities on women politicians’ role model effects

Women continuously report lower levels of political interest, efficacy, and ambition to run for political office. Among the public, there are high hopes for women politicians to serve as role models and inspire more women to engage in politics. However, research literature has not yet provided a clear answer on women politicians’ role model effects (Wolbrecht and Campbell 2017). Building upon this literature, I argue that not all women politicians are perceived as role models by all women. By taking seriously the intersection of different social identities, I argue that women will become more inspired by women politicians that are similar to themselves on more salient social identities than only gender such as race, age, and social class as well as partisan identity. I test the argument in the context of US local politics. In study one I examine to what extent shared partisan and social identities enhances identification with politicians and perceiving a politician as inspiring with a conjoint experiment. I find that women are more able to relate to politicians and perceive politicians as more inspiring when they share gender, race, partisan identity, age, and social class. Secondly, I find that that in some instances more shared identities enhance the effect of shared gender on inspiration. In study two, I employ a survey experiment using video treatments depicting a story of how a women politician has become politically active. In this I manipulate exposure to the politician and the similarity between the respondent and the politician in terms of race and partisan identity. I find that while women are more able to relate similar politicians, then similar politicians do not have stronger role model effects on women's own political interest, internal efficacy, and political ambition. Among white women, there is a tendency towards positive effects regardless of similarity with the politician or not, while there are negative effects of the video treatments among Black women regardless of seeing a similar or dissimilar politician. This implies that role model effects might depend more on what the role model does than who she is.