Candidate Gender Research Articles

Exploring Suitable Electoral Systems for Promotion of Women’s Representation in Tanzania and Rwanda

This article explores suitable electoral system(s) for the promotion of women’s representation in the Tanzania and Rwanda from a legal standpoint. The scrutiny of international law finds an absence of legal guidance on the favorable electoral system for enhancing the participation of women in elections, except trivially under the 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. The Declaration calls for states and parties to adopt electoral systems that encourage political parties to nominate women candidates. The first-past-the-post (FPTP) electoral system as applied in Tanzania operates without candidate gender thresholds, and consequently does not encourage political parties to nominate women candidates. While the proportional representation (PR) electoral system has placed Rwanda as a global leader in women’s representation in parliament, the system is set at 30 percent and does not expressly decree the gender quota or the positioning of women in the political parties’ candidate lists. This article discusses the advantages and challenges associated with the FPTP electoral system as well as the PR electoral system in Tanzania and Rwanda respectively, in light of international law principles, and offers recommendations on needed adjustments.

Interviewer bias when using multiple mini-interviews in selecting student nurses in a Chinese setting

BackgroundInterviewer effects may cause unfairness in assessments in multiple mini-interviews (MMIs). Due to cultural differences, the bias factors of interviewers may vary between the East and the West. MMIs are a relatively new type of assessment setting in China and few studies have been conducted to examine the interviewer effects of MMIs in this context. ObjectivesWe adopted a multi-faceted Rasch measurement (MFRM) to measure interviewer effects in assessments in Hong Kong. MethodsData were collected from a nursing school in Hong Kong. There were 431 candidates and 12 interviewers engaged in a six-station MMI setting. The scores collected from the interviews were analyzed in terms of 1) interviewer stringency/leniency, 2) candidate gender, 3) interview time, and 4) rating category in the station. The Student's t-statistic values were calculated to investigate the marking tendencies of individual interviewers. ResultsThe research findings suggest that interviewers differ in their degree of stringency/leniency, but the number of candidates examined by each interviewer does not affect interviewer stringency/leniency in terms of the interviewer's assessment. There is not sufficient evidence indicating that candidate gender and interview time are bias factors affecting assessment score in this study. Among the six rating categories examined, honesty/integrity is the most stringent category, while self-awareness is the most lenient category. Interview bias from individuals was identified. When we consider the interview scores given by individual interviewers, it is evident that some interviewers may have been biased toward a certain gender or rating categories. ConclusionsMMIs are useful when selecting student nurses in a Chinese setting. However, interviewer bias may exist. We used an MFRM to better understand interviewer bias across various dimensions. The present study contributes to the development and use of MMIs in non-Western countries and can be used as a reference to extend this research to other locations.

Newspaper Coverage of the 1990 Pennsylvania Gubernatorial Campaign

A content analysis of five daily newspapers' coverage of the 1990 Pennsylvania gubernatorial contest revealed that, as hypothesized, the "strategic game," particularly the horse race, was the predominant press theme. Also confirmed were the predictions that a gubernatorial challenger would receive as much coverage as the incumbent but that differences in patterns of incumbent and challenger coverage would appear. The press focused more on the challenger's campaign mistakes and problems and on the incumbent's record and experience. The fact that the challenger was a female and the incumbent a male received little media attention, and there were very few mentions of candidate gender. Differences in coverage patterns among the five papers were also found: the larger papers were more attentive to the campaign, but contrary to expectations were not more attentive to the issues. Issue-oriented coverage was most prominent in the paper published in the state capital.

‘An unfinished democracy’: gender and political representation in the Republic of Ireland

ABSTRACT Ireland’s Decade of Centenaries, beginning in 2012, has seen the commemoration of a period of significant social and political transformation. For scholars of gender and politics, it also provides the opportunity to take stock of women’s path to greater political representation (ultimately aided by the introduction of a candidate gender quota in 2016) and to highlight key areas where more work needs to be done in order to understand how women can enjoy greater inclusion and participation, as well as representation of their interests, going forward. This symposium provides an overview of what we know about the causes of women’s underrepresentation in Irish political life so far, before addressing some of these areas where our understanding is as yet underdeveloped. In doing so, it contributes to the developing knowledge of the Irish case. Overall, the symposium highlights diverse forms of women’s political participation in the Republic of Ireland.

Penalties for Going Against Type: How Sexism Shapes Voters’ Perceptions of Candidate Character

Although women are increasingly represented in elected office, little is known about how a female candidate's gender influences voter approval when her messaging emphasizes her strong leadership ability—a character trait generally regarded as masculine. Drawing from theories of social cognition and gender stereotypes, we examine in this article how citizens react to male and female politicians who emphasize particular character traits. After synthesizing relevant literature, we report on a study conducted to see whether women lose public support for emphasizing their leadership ability—thus “going against type.” In a survey of more than 800 American adults, we found that respondents penalized a fictional woman running for Congress when her messaging to voters emphasized the core character trait of leadership, as opposed to compassion (a trait traditionally associated with women) or no character trait at all. In contrast, respondents viewed a fictional man more favorably when his messaging to voters went against type by highlighting compassion than when he emphasized leadership. These findings suggest that female candidates have fewer options than men do when selecting which personal characteristics to present in their messaging to gain the approval of the voting public. This result underscores the need for policies and programs that promote female leadership in all walks of life, thereby leading the public to associate leadership skill with both genders equally.

The Effects of Candidate Appearance on Electoral Success: Evidence from Ecuador

Research has shown that attractiveness can be an important factor for candidate success under many conditions. In this paper, we analyze the potential for voting environments to encourage voting based on appearance. We examine Ecuador’s 2019 municipal elections, where voters faced complex candidate choices within a highly candidate-centered electoral system. The ballots in these elections provided photos of each candidate, which enhanced the potential for candidate appearance to act as a heuristic in a context of low-information decision-making. We find that candidate attractiveness has a positive effect on candidate electoral performance, particularly when candidates are placed in the most prominent section of the ballot. We find no substantial difference by candidate gender in the effect of attractiveness overall, although the effects are more consistent for female candidates when accounting for ballot location. Further analysis utilizing gender-separated polling stations shows that the effects are strongest for female voters .

The Effect of Veteran Status on Job Candidate Assessments in U.S. Local Governments

Veterans are often framed as an untapped resource for local governments to boost the public service workforce. While past recruitment efforts tend to draw a straight line from military experience to civilian careers in policing and emergency services, it remains unclear how HR professionals, more generally, weigh military experience when assessing candidate preparedness for a managerial career in public service. We examine how veteran status affects U.S. city and county HR directors’ evaluation of candidates for entry-level managerial positions in local government. Using an experimental design, we randomly assign candidate characteristics–veteran vis-à-vis non-veteran status and male vis-à-vis female–and observe HR directors’ assessment of candidate preparedness. Our findings reveal a premium of veteran status on candidate assessments relative to similar private sector experience, while results are less conclusive when the comparison is made to similar public sector experience. Additionally, we find no clear evidence of disparate assessments of candidate preparedness as a function of candidate gender

Gender Distribution of Authors of Evaluation Letters for Promotion at One Medical School.

Women remain underrepresented in key leadership positions and advanced ranks in academic medicine. This study examines the numbers of men and women letter writers for promotion candidates during a 5-year period across departments, tracks, ranks, and candidate gender. A descriptive study characterized the gender of evaluation letter writers for candidates for promotion to associate or full professor at the University of Minnesota Medical School between 2015 and 2020. Letter writer and candidate gender were characterized by self-identified pronouns in the faculty biography or dossier. Letter writer gender was described by candidate department, promotion track, rank, terminal degree, and gender. Among 299 candidates for promotion, 172 (58%) were men and 127 (42%) were women; dossiers included 3,995 evaluation letters. Across all years, men wrote more letters than women (external letters, range, 69% in 2019-2020 to 75% in 2015-2016; internal letters, range, 67% in 2018-2019 to 77% in 2015-2016). Candidates in the family medicine and pediatrics departments had the highest percentages of letters written by women (44% and 40%, respectively). No differences were found in the number of women letter writers by candidate promotion track; however, differences were found by candidate rank (associate professor, 30%; full professor, 23%) and terminal degree (MD/DO, 25%; PhD, 33%; MD-PhD, 20%). Regardless of candidate gender, most evaluation letters were written by men. Women candidates had 15% to 20% more letters authored by women than men candidates (34%-40% vs 18%-23%). The gender pattern of letter writers may reflect implicit biases regarding gender and perceived leadership status, expertise, and success. Adopting policies that promote or require gender diversity among letter writers for promotion candidates may provide an opportunity to encourage faculty to seek diverse networks and recognize the achievements of women faculty.

Exploring Potential Schedule-Related and Gender Biases in Ophthalmology Residency Interview Scores

AbstractPurpose Prior studies have revealed grading discrepancies in evaluation of personal statements and letters of recommendation based on candidate's race and gender. Fatigue and the end-of-day phenomenon can negatively impact task performance but have not been studied in the residency selection process. Our primary objective is to determine whether factors related to interview time and day as well as candidate's and interviewer's gender have a significant effect on residency interview scores.Methods Seven years of ophthalmology residency candidate evaluation scores from 2013 to 2019 were collected at a single academic institution, standardized by interviewer into relative percentiles (0–100 point grading scale), and grouped into the following categories for comparisons: different interview days (Day 1 vs. Day 2), morning versus afternoon (AM vs. PM), interview session (Day 1 AM/PM vs. Day 2 AM/PM), before and after breaks (morning break, lunch break, and afternoon break), residency candidate's gender, and interviewer's gender.Results Candidates in the morning sessions were found to have higher scores than afternoon sessions (52.75 vs. 49.28, p < 0.001). Interview scores in the early morning, late morning, and early afternoon were higher than late afternoon scores (54.47, 53.01, 52.15 vs. 46.74, p < 0.001). Across all interview years, there were no differences in scores received before and after morning breaks (51.71 vs. 52.83, p = 0.49), lunch breaks (53.01 vs. 52.15, p = 0.58), and afternoon breaks (50.35 vs. 48.30, p = 0.21). No differences were found in scores received by female versus male candidates (51.55 vs. 50.49, p = 0.21) or scores given by female versus male interviewers (51.31 vs. 50.84, p = 0.58).Conclusion Afternoon residency candidate interview scores, especially late afternoon, were significantly lower than morning scores, suggesting the need to further study the effects of interviewer's fatigue in the residency interview process. The interview day, presence of break times, candidate's gender, and interviewer's gender had no significant effects on interview score.

Paying for child care on the campaign trail: attitudes toward the use of campaign finances for personal expenses

ABSTRACT The US Congress is unrepresentative of the people it serves, and reforming campaign finance law may be a path toward a more representative institution. We examine public opinion toward allowing candidates to use campaign funds for child care, theorizing gender conditions support due to the unequal burden child care places on women. Using an experiment, we find people are more supportive of candidates using campaign funds for child care when the hypothetical candidates are women. Women respondents are especially likely to vary their support for the policy based on candidate gender. This project is the first to explore public support for allowing candidates to use campaign funds for personal expenses, contributing to our understanding of support for reform that could transform the types of candidates willing to run.

The Intersection of Candidate Gender and Ethnicity: How Voters Respond to Campaign Messages from Latinas

Despite the recent surge of women of color in elected political office in the U.S., the representation of Latinas is strikingly low. Past research offers unclear conclusions as to whether Latina political candidates face biases due to the intersection of their identities as women and as ethnic minorities, and how Latinas can navigate such biases. In this study, we identify how Latinas draw on their intersectional identities as both women and ethnic minorities to develop strategic campaign messages and how voters respond to such messages. Through an analysis of campaign advertising data and an original survey experiment, we show that Latina candidates do not face an automatic disadvantage based in gender and ethnic biases, but they can benefit from the intersection of these two identities, especially among female minority voters. These results are consequential because they offer insights into how to improve the descriptive and substantive representation of marginalized groups in the U.S.

Political Attacks in 280 Characters or Less: A New Tool for the Automated Classification of Campaign Negativity on Social Media

Negativity in election campaign matters. To what extent can the content of social media posts provide a reliable indicator of candidates' campaign negativity? We introduce and critically assess an automated classification procedure that we trained to annotate more than 16,000 tweets of candidates competing in the 2018 Senate Midterms. The algorithm is able to identify the presence of political attacks (both in general, and specifically for character and policy attacks) and incivility. Due to the novel nature of the instrument, the article discusses the external and convergent validity of these measures. Results suggest that automated classifications are able to provide reliable measurements of campaign negativity. Triangulations with independent data show that our automatic classification is strongly associated with the experts’ perceptions of the candidates’ campaign. Furthermore, variations in our measures of negativity can be explained by theoretically relevant factors at the candidate and context levels (e.g., incumbency status and candidate gender); theoretically meaningful trends are also found when replicating the analysis using tweets for the 2020 Senate election, coded using the automated classifier developed for 2018. The implications of such results for the automated coding of campaign negativity in social media are discussed.

Best person or best mix? How public sector managers understand the merit principle

AbstractAs public sector organisations around the world enact strategies to progress gender equality, managers are forced to navigate the apparent conflict between making employment decisions on individual‐level ‘merit’ and considering the collective constraints and disadvantage that occur along gender lines. In this paper, we investigate how managers’ understandings of merit contribute to this tension. Analysing data collected in focus groups with 273 mid‐level public sector managers in four Australian jurisdictions where efforts to promote gender equality were actively under way, we found that many managers adhered to a highly individualised understanding of merit which precluded them from considering gender or addressing gendered inequality in their employment decisions. Only a small proportion of managers who believed that creating a more representative bureaucracy was a legitimate public sector objective were able to justify considering a candidate's gender as a source of merit. We argue that public sector organisations seeking to promote gender equality should focus managers’ attention on the benefits of achieving a more representative bureaucracy and give managers greater normative and regulatory certainty about how to assess and apply merit in that context.

Gender-affinity voting in legislative elections under open-list proportional representation rules: the legislative elections in Chile in 2017

ABSTRACT In most democracies, women are a majority in the electorate, but men are the majority of those elected. Previous studies on gender affinity voting that point to substantive, descriptive and symbolic representation are often based on polling date and focus on whether women issues were central in the election. Since electoral rules—including candidate gender quotas—impact the choices voters have, we use a novel database with precinct-level voting data for 960 candidates (397 women) in the 28 open-list proportional representation districts for the 2017 Chamber of Deputies election in Chile to identify the determinants of gender affinity voting for candidates in same party matchups and whether gender affinity voting differently impacted left and rightwing parties. Using 35,120 precincts, we analyze 1,344,098 data points for individual candidates’ vote shares. We find statistically significant, but not substantive, gender affinity voting, especially favorable to women candidates in leftwing parties.

Is Beauty in the Eye of the Beholder? Differences in Residency Training Program Preferences Among Women and Minorities

Training programs are now more than ever seeking ways to promote recruitment and retention of a diverse resident workforce. The goal of this study was to examine how gender and ethnic identities affect applicant attraction to surgery training programs. Applicants to general surgery residency in 2018 to 2019 completed a 31-item assessment measuring preferences for training program characteristics and attributes. Differences in preferences across candidate gender and ethnicity were investigated. Factor analyses and analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used to explore these differences. 1491 unique applicants to 7 residency programs completed the assessment, representing 67% of all applicants to general surgery during the 2018 to 2019 season. Women preferred training programs that had high levels of social support (p < 0.001), were less traditional (p < 0.001), and with less turbulence (p < 0.05). Non-white candidates reported greater preference for programs with higher levels of established academics (p < 0.001), clinical experiences (p < 0.001), social support (p < 0.05), traditionalism (p < 0.001), flexibility (p < 0.001), and innovation (p < 0.001). Organizational efforts to attract and retain a diverse workforce may benefit from considering the aspects of work that align with female and underrepresented minority preferences.

The deficit bias: Candidate gender differences in the relative importance of facial stereotypic qualities to leadership hiring.

Recent findings highlight two facets of the two fundamental stereotype content dimensions of agency (i.e., ‘dominance’ and ‘competence’) and communality (i.e., ‘morality’ and ‘sociability’; e.g., Abele et al., 2016) with implications for understanding gender inequality in the workplace (e.g., Prati et al., 2019). Extending this research and contributing to the facial first impressions literature, we examined how these facets of agency and communality when inferred from White men’s and women’s faces, along with attractiveness, influence their leadership suitability. In three studies in the United Kingdom (total N = 424), using student and working samples and two managerial descriptions, we found an unexpected pattern of results, supported by an internal meta‐analysis: attractiveness and competence were the most important predictors of hirability for all candidates. For women, dominance was the next most important predictor; for men, morality and sociability were more important than dominance. Moreover, morality and sociability were more important in evaluating men than women, while dominance was more important in evaluating women than men. Findings are discussed in terms of a ‘deficit bias’, whereby the qualities women and men are considered to lack – dominance for women, morality, and sociability for men – may be given more weight when evaluating their leadership suitability.

Gender, Candidate Emotional Expression, and Voter Reactions During Televised Debates

Voters evaluate politicians not just by what they say, but also how they say it, via facial displays of emotions and vocal pitch. Candidate characteristics can shape how leaders use—and how voters react to—nonverbal cues. Drawing on role congruity expectations, we study how the use of and reactions to facial, vocal, and textual communication in political debates varies by candidate gender. Relying on full-length videos of four German federal election debates (2005–2017) and a minor party debate, we use video, audio, and text data to measure candidate facial displays of emotion, vocal pitch, and speech sentiment. Consistent with our expectations, Angela Merkel expresses less anger than her male opponents, but she is just as emotive in other respects. Combining these measures of emotional expression with continuous responses recorded by live audiences, we find that voters punish Merkel for anger displays and reward her happiness and general emotional displays.

Stereotyping Latinas: candidate gender and ethnicity on the political stage

ABSTRACT Current scholarship analyzes how gender influences the character-based traits and belief-based traits that women candidates are attributed. Yet little is known about the effect of the intersection of candidate sex and ethnicity on stereotyping. Thus, I explore whether candidate stereotyping functions similarly for Latina candidates as it does for white women. I also test if the race or ethnicity of the voter plays any role in how Latina women candidates are stereotyped. Given that we know that race/ethnicity matter for voters, particularly voters of color, I assess what occurs when candidate sex is also included. With the use of original survey data and through the use of difference of means tests I analyze how a Latina candidate compares with three other candidate types on feminine, masculine, and belief-based traits. I also compare how stereotyping varies based on the race and ethnicity of the voter. On the one hand my results are mixed regarding how Latina candidates are stereotyped, while on the other I do find that Latina/o respondents assess Latina candidates in a more favorable manner relative to white respondents.

Are You My Candidate? Gender, Undervoting, and Vote Choice in Same-Party Matchups

AbstractPartisanship is the dominant force that dictates American electoral behavior. Yet Americans often participate in elections in which either the partisanship of candidates is unknown or candidates from the same party compete, rendering the partisan cue meaningless. In this research, we examine how candidate demographics—specifically gender—relate to voter behavior and candidate selection in these contexts. Leveraging survey data from same-party matchups in congressional elections (resulting from “top-two primaries”), we examine the relationship between candidate gender and undervoting and vote choice. We find that in same-party matchups, women candidates are associated with lower levels of undervoting among women voters. Furthermore, we find that in mixed-gender contests, women voters from both parties and Democratic men are more likely to favor female candidates. The findings presented here have important implications for the literatures on gender and politics, electoral politics, partisanship, and the design of electoral institutions.

CREO: EL ASCENSO Y LOS DESAFÍOS DE CONSOLIDACIÓN DEL PARTIDO POLÍTICO DE DERECHA EMERGENTE EN ECUADOR (2013–2021)

This article analyzes the rise and consolidation challenges of the largest right-wing party in Ecuador at the national level: Movimiento Creando Oportunidades (CREO). Our approach focuses on the effect of electoral rules and creo’s internal organization. Employing supply and demand analyses, we discuss the rationale behind its electoral success from 2013 to 2021. Thereafter, we outline CREO's electoral performance per types of elections and candidate gender, as well as by provinces and overseas districts. Overall, creo has emerged and evolved overshadowed by the Movimiento Patria Altiva I Soberana (MPAÍS), particularly from Correism, to become a serious national electoral competitor since 2017 and won the presidential office in 2021. After the latest elections on April 2021, its main challenges stem from the dependence of the figure of Guillermo Lasso and its continuity as main right-wing party in the future.