Playing the Women’s Card: How Women Respond to Female Candidates’ Descriptive Versus Substantive Representation

• Date: 01 May 2019
• Published date: 01 May 2019
• DOI: 10.1177/1532673X18776622
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X18776622

American Politics Research

2019, Vol. 47(3) 549 –581

© The Author(s) 2018

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DOI: 10.1177/1532673X18776622

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Article

Playing the Women’s

Card: How Women

Respond to Female

Candidates’ Descriptive

Versus Substantive

Representation

Danielle Joesten Martin1

Abstract

When presented the choice between a male and female candidate, it is

commonly assumed that women prefer a female candidate. But as more

policy and ideologically diverse women run for office, this assumption

may not hold true. Using an experimental design embedded in a nationally

representative survey, I test how voters respond to female candidates

with ideologies and abortion positions similar and contrary to their own

preferences. I find that women, generally, prefer a female candidate, but

support for a female candidate among women decreases significantly when

she has a contrary ideology or policy position. Whether women prefer

descriptive or substantive representation also is conditioned on individual-

level characteristics. This study advances our understanding of voters’

responses to female candidates’ varying ideological and issue positions,

which is increasingly important as more women run for office. Although

women are more likely than men to give female candidates the benefit of the

doubt, not just any female candidate will do—she needs to appeal to women

on issue and ideological grounds too.

1California State University, Sacramento, CA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Danielle Joesten Martin, California State University, Sacramento, 6000 J Street, TAH 3104,

Sacramento, CA 95819-6089, USA.

Email: danielle.martin@csus.edu

776622APRXXX10.1177/1532673X18776622American Politics ResearchMartin

research-article2018

550 American Politics Research 47(3)

Keywords

descriptive representation, women and politics, issue voting

Disparaging Hillary Clinton as a presidential candidate, Donald Trump

declared, “The only thing she’s got going is the woman’s card,” backhand-

edly assuming that running as a woman benefits her as a candidate. In

response, Clinton’s campaign began selling woman cards, calling attention to

Clinton’s advocacy of women’s issues. Throughout the 2016 presidential

campaign, Clinton highlighted her experiences as a woman in the workplace

and politics, and focused on issues particularly relevant to women, including

paid family leave, health care, and equal pay. Indeed, headlines claimed,

“Hillary Clinton 2016 strategy revealed: I’m a woman, vote for me” (Schow,

2015), which beg the following question: Is it a winning strategy and are

women more likely to vote for female candidates? Political pundits presumed

female voters would inevitably support Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presiden-

tial election (Walsh, 2015), and when polls revealed that women did not uni-

formly support Clinton, much ink was spilled asking why women did not

support a female candidate for president.1 By asking why women would not

support a female candidate, researchers, the media, and political pundits per-

petuate the common assumption that women prefer a female candidate. Yet,

this assumption is that all women voters employ a similar decision calculus

in making their vote choice, and that all women candidates would be similar

representatives. As Campbell and Heath (2017) conclude,

Women do not react in a homogeneous way to the sex of the candidate, and the

assumption that women are more likely to vote for women candidates is

therefore too simplistic and assumes a uniformity of motivations for doing so

that are not present in practice. (p. 228)

Moreover, not all women candidates are homogeneous in experience, quality,

issue positions, or ideology, and there may be conflict for voters prioritizing

between descriptive and substantive representation. What if the female candi-

date has an opposing ideology or issue position, making the female candidate

a good choice for a woman in terms of descriptive representation but a poor

choice in terms of substantive representation? Will women give the female

candidate the benefit of the doubt and support her for non-policy reasons?

Furthermore, many voters assume female candidates hold certain stereotypi-

cal issue positions and generally are more liberal and likely to be a Democrat

(Herrnson, Lay, & Stokes, 2003; Huddy & Terkildsen, 1993; Koch, 2002;

McDermott, 1997, 1998). But if a woman candidate holds a non-stereotypical

Martin 551

policy position or ideology—as increasingly will be the case as more women

run for office—sex no longer serves as a useful cue for voters. If sex is an inac-

curate heuristic to determine a candidate’s policy preferences, will female vot-

ers nevertheless vote for a descriptive representative?

Thus, my research question is as follows:

Research Question 1: When—if ever—will descriptive representation be

more compelling than substantive representation among women?

In low-information environments, I expect women support female candi-

dates at a higher rate than men—an expectation consistent with theories of

descriptive representation. When presented with a female candidate with

policy positions or ideologies contrary to their own, I hypothesize that wom-

en’s support for the female candidate will decrease but will remain higher

than support among men, indicating that women weigh both descriptive and

substantive representation. Furthermore, I show that women’s responses to a

female with contrary ideology and issue positions vary based on individual-

level characteristics. I use a nationally representative survey experiment dur-

ing the 2014 congressional elections to test these expectations. The

experimental design presents participants with a female candidate whose

position on abortion and ideology vary based on participants’ reported abor-

tion opinion, ideology, and to which treatment group participants are random-

ized. I find that relative to men, women are more likely to discount contrary

ideology and issue positions by expressing support for a female candidate.

However, although women’s support for a female candidate is higher com-

pared with men, women’s support for a female candidate with contrary policy

preferences is lower than support for a female candidate with similar policy

preferences. These results imply that although women often give female can-

didates the benefit of the doubt with support, female candidates may not auto-

matically win women’s vote.

Descriptive Representation and Gender Affinity

There are multiple reasons to expect women prefer a female candidate,

including gender identity voting, women’s issues representation, and general

preference for descriptive representation. First, the alignment of a voter’s and

a candidate’s sex influences vote choice among women, perhaps because

gender identity creates a sense of group solidarity among women (Plutzer &

Zipp, 1996). Second, certain political issues, such as abortion, education,

health care, and welfare, frequently are referred to as “women’s issues,” and

voters assume women are more likely—and best suited—to address these