Candidate Gender and the Political Engagement of Women and Men

• DOI: 10.1177/1532673X14547228
• Published date: 01 September 2015
• Date: 01 September 2015
• Author: Jennifer Wolak
• Subject Matter: Articles

547228APRXXX10.1177/1532673X14547228American Politics ResearchWolak
research-article2014
Article
American Politics Research
2015, Vol. 43(5) 872 –896
Candidate Gender and
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DOI: 10.1177/1532673X14547228
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of Women and Men
Jennifer Wolak1
Abstract
Does the presence of descriptive representation have symbolic consequences
for women’s engagement in politics? Given mixed results from prior survey-
based studies, I use experiments to investigate whether there is a direct
psychological effect of candidate gender on voters’ interest in political
engagement. By holding the features of the campaign and attributes of the
candidates constant, I investigate the specific effects of candidate gender
on people’s perceptions of the candidates and their desire to engage in
politics. I find that women’s interest and engagement with the campaign is
insensitive to the gender of the candidates, while men are less interested
in participating in the election when the congressional candidate from their
party is female. The mere presence of women candidates does not animate
women’s engagement in campaigns.
Keywords
gender, empowerment, political engagement, descriptive representation,
experiments
When women run for office, are other women mobilized to participate in
politics? Many have argued that increasing the share of women in public
office is symbolically important, promoting the inclusion and engagement of
1University of Colorado, Boulder, USA
Corresponding Author:
Jennifer Wolak, Department of Political Science, University of Colorado, 333 UCB, Boulder,
CO 80309-0333, USA.
Email: wolakj@colorado.edu

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Wolak
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other women in politics (Mansbridge, 1999; Phillips, 1995; Sapiro, 1981).
When women see other women in office, it challenges perceptions of politics
as a domain only for men. Increasing the share of women politicians is
thought to cultivate a sense of political empowerment for women, where
women feel greater capability to express their political views and exercise
political influence. In this way, gender diversity in politics has the potential
to motivate women to greater political engagement. But empirical evidence
for the empowering effects of descriptive representation has been quite
mixed. In some cases, increasing the share of women running for office
appears to activate women’s engagement in politics (Atkeson, 2003; Hansen,
1997; Reingold & Harrell, 2010), while in other studies, greater female rep-
resentation has limited effect on women’s engagement (Dolan, 2006; Lawless,
2004).
To better gauge whether the mere presence of women candidates on the
ballot engages women’s participation in an election, I turn to experiments.
Prior studies on the empowering effects of women candidates are all survey-
based, relying on observational data. This approach makes it difficult to iso-
late whether the effects of candidate gender are psychologically rooted
among prospective voters, or structurally based, in the character of the cam-
paign contest. It may be that the empowering effects of gender play out in
how voters interpret and perceive candidate gender, where women who see
other women running become more interested and politically engaged by the
contest.
Or it might be that gendered differences in voter engagement reflect cam-
paign variations, where women candidates receive different levels or kinds of
media coverage, choose to emphasize different campaign issues, or emerge
as more or less competitive candidates. Women candidates may seek office in
districts that are distinctive from districts where male candidates traditionally
fill the ballot, or some election years may prove more favorable to women
candidates than others.
In the experiments, I hold campaign and candidate characteristics con-
stant, varying only the gender and the political parties of the candidates. By
doing so, I can isolate the specific effects of candidate gender on voters’ reac-
tions to the candidates and the campaign. When women candidates receive
the same media coverage as men and are described as having the same char-
acteristics, how do people react? In other words, to what extent do the effects
of descriptive representation for political engagement rest on the symbolic
presence of women rather than differences in campaigns, platforms, or party
mobilization?
I find little evidence that women are engaged by the presence of women
candidates on the ballot. They are no more interested, efficacious, or inclined

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American Politics Research 43(5)
to participate when female candidates are on the ballot—which casts doubt
on arguments that the mere presence of women candidates transforms how
women relate to politics. Men are mostly unaffected as well, though in some
cases, it appears that men are actually less inclined toward political engage-
ment when women candidates are present. This suggests that any mobilizing
effects of candidate gender are rooted more in the nature of the contest than
in voter perceptions, as people tend to see campaigns similarly regardless of
candidate gender. If the effects of gender come through the character of cam-
paigns, then this can explain why we find conditional evidence for the effects
of descriptive representation, dependent on the characteristics of the candi-
date (Atkeson, 2003; Reingold & Harrell, 2010) or the election (Hansen,
1997; Koch, 1997).
Political Engagement Among Women
In recent elections, the rates of voter turnout among women have exceeded
those of men. But on a number of other dimensions of voter engagement,
women are less engaged. Women are less likely to contact an elected official
than men and less likely to try to influence the votes of others (Rosenstone &
Hansen, 1993). They are less likely to say they donate money to candidates
or participate in political organizations (Verba, Schlozman, & Brady, 1995).
Women are less likely to say they enjoy political discussion, and less likely to
participate in it than men (Verba, Burns, & Schlozman, 1997). Men report
greater interest in politics and greater political efficacy than women (Bennett
& Bennett, 1989; Gidengil, Giles, & Thomas, 2008; Verba, Burns, &
Schlozman, 1997), and score better than women on tests of political knowl-
edge (Delli Carpini & Keeter, 1996).
What explains this gender gap in political engagement? In part, it is sim-
ply that women are less likely to hold resources such as education and income
that facilitate political participation (Verba, Schlozman, & Brady, 1997;
Welch, 1977). Yet while such factors can help explain some of the differences
between levels of political action of men and women, they cannot fully
explain the gender gap in political participation (Bennett & Bennett, 1989;
Burns, Schlozman, & Verba, 2001). It seems that part of the explanation is
that women participate in politics for different reasons than men do (Burns
et al., 2001; Sapiro & Conover, 1997). From a young age, childhood and
adolescent experiences lead women and men to develop different ideas about
their political roles (Jennings, 1983), and the acquisition of political knowl-
edge and civic skills seems to occur by fundamentally different routes for
men and women (i.e., Djupe, Sokhey, & Gilbert, 2007; Wolak & McDevitt,
2011).

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It is argued that women’s participation in particular is deterred by the
underrepresentation of women in elected office. If women do not see other
women engaged in the business of politics, they may feel excluded—that
government is not open to their concerns or that their interests will not be
represented (Carroll, 1994; Mansbridge, 1999). They may come to see poli-
tics as a realm not suited or hospitable to women—particularly if women see
only male officeholders and few other women engaged in political pursuits
(Mansbridge, 1999; Sapiro, 1981). Indeed, adolescent females in states with
more women seeking office are more likely to say they intend to be involved
in politics in the future (Campbell & Wolbrecht, 2006). Others have argued
that when women run for Congress, the gender gap in political involvement
shrinks (Sapiro & Conover, 1997). Women in states with more women seek-
ing office are more likely to try to persuade others how to vote (Atkeson,
2003; Hansen, 1997; Reingold & Harrell, 2010), engage in political discus-
sion (Atkeson, 2003; Reingold & Harrell, 2010), and often report more inter-
est in the campaign and knowledge about the candidates (Atkeson, 2003;
Burns et al., 2001; Koch, 1997).1
In other studies, however, the share of women candidates and women in
office appears to have limited consequences for women’s engagement in
politics. Women feel no more external efficacy when personally represented
by women in Congress (Atkeson & Carrillo, 2007; Lawless, 2004), nor are
they any more likely to choose to participate in politics (Broockman, 2014;
Dolan, 2006; Lawless, 2004). Dolan (2006) finds no differences in the levels
of political interest of women in districts where women run compared with
those where only men are campaigning for office. Cross-nationally, the level
of female representation in government is unrelated to levels of political
engagement or campaign activity (Karp & Banducci, 2008).
If the mere presence of women on the ballot and as officeholders psycho-
logically empowers women to feel more politically efficacious and engaged,
why is the evidence so mixed? Some...