This project examines how citizens evaluate the congruence between a politician’s gender, policy specialization, and territorial background. Building on scholarship on gender stereotypes and political competence, it explores whether male and female politicians are evaluated differently depending on whether their expertise aligns or conflicts with the gendered nature of policy domains, and whether these evaluations are conditioned by the type of constituency they represent (urban or rural). Specifically, we ask whether female deputies are perceived more favorably when associated with stereotypically feminine issues such as social policy/feminism, and less positively when linked to masculine domains such as agriculture, and how these patterns vary across territorial contexts. To address these questions, the study employs a conjoint experimental design conducted in Spain. This design enables the systematic manipulation of multiple candidate attributes—gender, policy specialization, geographic context, party affiliation, and political experience— allowing for causal inference about the relative weight of each in shaping citizens’ preferences. Ultimately, the project seeks to advance our understanding of how gendered and territorial stereotypes interact in shaping citizens’ perceptions of political competence and contribute to the persistence of a gendered division of labor within the political sphere.
