Untangling the Relationship between Partisanship, Gender Stereotypes, and Support for Female Candidates

Abstract

ABSTRACTExisting literature debates whether gender stereotypes or partisanship has a greater effect on evaluations of female candidates. Feminine stereotypes are considered incongruent with leadership roles, but partisanship is also an important cue for many voters. Complicating the influence of feminine stereotypes is that this concept overlaps with stereotypes about the Democratic Party. This manuscript examines the influence of partisanship and feminine stereotypes in how voters perceive female candidates. Using an original survey experiment, the results uncover several findings. First, partisanship and gender do not combine to activate feminine stereotypes. Second, feminine information activates feminine stereotypes for only Democratic female candidates while masculine information prevents feminine stereotyping for all candidate types. Overall, voters evaluate Democratic female candidates favorably when they have feminine or masculine information, but Republican female candidates receive evaluations that are more critical. These results suggest that feminine stereotypes and partisanship jointly affect perceptions of female candidates.