Evangelical Protestantism and Bias Against Female Political Leaders*

Abstract

ObjectiveGender and politics scholars have paid little attention to religion as a source of individual‐level biases against female politicians. We begin to address this gap by modeling the relationship among evangelical Protestantism, partisanship, and the beliefs that males are better issue advocates and political leaders than women.MethodsWe employ logistic regression models with data from a 2008 survey administered by the Pew Social and Demographic Trends Project.ResultsWe find that evangelical Protestantism, but not religious attendance more generally, is a strong predictor of whether Americans will hold biases against female political leaders. The effect of evangelical Protestantism is especially pronounced within the Republican Party.ConclusionsThese findings suggest a potential cause of the underrepresentation of women in the political world. They further underscore the need to control for religious denomination in future studies of gender stereotyping.