Join Zoom Meeting: zoom.us/j/95465830050?pwd=C9bVWTjW7y8dWqi4qED0MgCvVkCrZG.1 (Meeting ID: 954 6583 0050, Passcode: 867678)

Abstract: Across the world women remain underrepresented in politics. Theoretically, this underrepresentation could be driven by demand-side and supply-side explanations, or a combination of the two. This presentation focuses on two interrelated demand-side explanations reporting results from a 20-country study (N=14,000 collected through YouGov) about citizens’ 1) gendered candidate preferences, and 2) trait and issue competence stereotypes about women and men in politics. The data collection combines a conjoint candidate choice experiment, survey measures of trait and issue competence stereotypes, a multitude of respondent-level demographics and predispositions, and country-level characteristics. Results regarding gendered candidate preferences show an average preference of 3-percentage points for female candidates. This female advantage holds in fourteen out of twenty countries and is constant across both national and local election experimental conditions. Follow-up analyses show that the result is primarily driven by women (gender affinity) and leftwing (value-based preferences) respondents. Results regarding stereotypes about women and men in politics reveal that stereotypes are not as negative towards women as often believed. Women are seen as higher on horizontal traits (e.g., warmth and morality) and as more competent on “softer” issues (e.g., caretaking of sick and elderly, unemployment). However, for vertical traits results are more surprising: Women are perceived as more competent than men in most countries, and women have even closed the gap on assertiveness in many countries. Yet, women are still seen as less competent on “harder” issues (e.g., the economy, national security). Finally, combining the conjoint experiment and the stereotype measures it is revealed that stereotypes relate strongest to preferences for women or men candidates in countries with the lowest representation of women in parliament. In total, the project adds important comparative insights to existing research concluding that demand-side biases do not constitute the main obstacle for increasing women’s political representation.