Women, War, and Winning Elections: Gender Stereotyping in the Post-September 11th Era

Abstract

Scores of political science studies reveal that female candidates fare as well as their male counterparts. But the percentage of citizens willing to support a woman presidential party nominee has significantly decreased over the last two years. Based on the results of a Knowledge Networks national random sample survey, this article offers the first empirical examination of the manner in which the atmosphere of war might affect women candidates’ electoral prospects. I find that citizens prefer men’s leadership traits and characteristics, deem men more competent at legislating around issues of national security and military crises, and contend that men are superior to women at addressing the new obstacles generated by the events of September 11, 2001. As a result of this gender stereotyping, levels of willingness to support a qualified woman presidential candidate are lower than they have been for decades. These findings carry broad implications for the study of women and politics. If women fare as well as men when the political climate is dominated by issues that play to women’s stereotypical strengths, but are disadvantaged when “men’s issues” dominate the political agenda, then we must reconsider the conclusion that winning elections has nothing to do with the sex of the candidate.

Terrorist Threat, Male Stereotypes, and Candidate Evaluations

“…Although significant, the substantive effect is modest: the model predicts only a 0.05-unit change on the 0 to 1 dependent variable moving from the minimum to the maximum value on the terror measure. Thus, the results are in line with research suggesting that female leaders are disadvantaged when security threats are salient (e.g., Falk and Kenski 2006;Kenski and Falk 2004;Lawless 2004). However, we also see that-when considered through this generic lens-the effect is substantively small.…”

“…Male politicians, in contrast, are seen as more assertive, stronger leaders, better able to handle foreign affairs and defense, and more conservative (Dolan 2004(Dolan , 2014a(Dolan , 2014bHolman, Merolla, and Zechmeister 2011;Terkildsen 1993a, 1993b;Lawless 2004;Sanbonmatsu 2002a).…”

“…4 Another factor that influences the application of male or female stereotypes is context, that is, the nature of the information environment in a given election affects the extent to which voters privilege the traits and issue competencies that people ascribe to candidates by virtue of their gender. Some find that female leaders are judged by gendered standards when information is present that leads to the application of stereotypes (Bauer 2015a(Bauer , 2015bHolman, Merolla, and Zechmeister 2011;Krupnikov and Bauer 2014;Lawless 2004). Some contexts may advantage women, such as the "Year of the Woman" in 1992 or widespread interest in change (Brown, Diekman, and Schneider 2011;Dolan 1998).…”

“…Respondents were also given the option of selecting "No difference." The questions are based on measures used frequently in existing scholarship (Bauer 2015a;Dolan 2010Dolan , 2014aDolan , 2014bHuddy and Terkildsen 1993b;Lawless 2004;Mo 2015). Using principal components factor analysis of these questions, we extracted a Male Stereotype Factor with higher values consistent with the stereotype (i.e., that men are viewed as more assertive and better at foreign affairs).…”

A Woman for U.S. President? Gender and Leadership Traits Before and After 9/11

“…Given the importance of the "strong leader" perception as a predictor of people's votes, however, women candidates may find it necessary to emphasize this trait at the expense of other qualities. Female candidates may also benefit from voters' strong preference for a candidate who "cares about people like you," since compassion has traditionally been defined as a "feminine" trait (Lawless 2004) and gender schema reinforce voters' perceptions of women as more compassionate.…”