A large body of research has established gender differences in political attitudes, knowledge, and behavior. Yet we know surprisingly little about whether gender also shapes how voters respond to signals from political parties, so-called party cues. Voters rely on party cues for two main reasons: as information shortcuts that simplify complex policy choices, which becomes especially relevant to individuals with low political interest and knowledge, and as expressions of group identity that provide emotional rewards through belonging. Given that women, on average, report lower political knowledge and ambition, and are more attuned to social and group dynamics, we expect women to be more responsive to party cues than men. We test these expectations using two conjoint experiments conducted in Sweden and the UK. Our findings contribute to the literature on gender and representation by showing that gender conditions how citizens connect to parties and interpret political information. They hence speak to a gendered pathway to political representation that goes beyond participation and attitudes and instead focuses at women's likelihood of engaging with information. We also advance the cue-taking literature by demonstrating that responsiveness to party cues is not uniform but shaped by gender, an aspect largely neglected in previous research.
