Political Gender Stereotypes in a List-PR System with a High Share of Women MPs: Competent Men versus Leftist Women?

• DOI: 10.1177/1065912918761009
• Date: 01 December 2018
• Published date: 01 December 2018
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912918761009

Political Research Quarterly

2018, Vol. 71(4) 788 –800

© 2018 University of Utah

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DOI: 10.1177/1065912918761009

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Article

Introduction

The starting point of many studies on gender and politics

has been that women are underrepresented in politics. It

is the purpose of this article to explore the role of political

gender stereotypes as a source of voter bias. Gender ste-

reotypes are inherently present in our society, and also

affect the political scenery. Voters lack resources, time, or

interest to become informed about all election candidates.

Therefore, they rely on voting cues (McDermott 2009),

such as the sex of these candidates, and unconsciously

associate this with particular personality traits, capacities,

and opinions (Huddy and Terkildsen 1993b), which are

referred to as political gender stereotypes (Dolan 2014).

Although it is logical to assume that female politicians

will be perceived as similar to women in general,

Schneider and Bos (2014) contradict this reasoning. They

suggest that, because female politicians are different from

women in general, female politicians form a new stereo-

typical category with its own unique stereotypical quali-

ties. This underlines the necessity to further explore the

prevalence and content of political gender stereotypes

that might differ from general gender stereotypes.

The prevalence of political gender stereotypes has

been extensively documented in the United States, where

female representatives are rather scarce in parliament and

concentrated within the Democratic Party (Center for

American Women and Politics [CAWP] 2017). Generally,

women were considered as competent in communal

areas, such as education and health care, whereas male

candidates excel in all other issue domains (Alexander

and Andersen 1993; Kahn 1996; Matland 1994).

Furthermore, women were perceived as more leftist than

men (Dolan 2014; Huddy and Terkildsen 1993a; Koch

2002; Sapiro 1981).

However, we cannot simply extrapolate the results of

these American studies to other political systems, because

the United States has a distinct political culture and con-

text. Moreover, citizens’ views on women in politics may

761009PRQXXX10.1177/1065912918761009Political Research QuarterlyDevroe and Wauters

research-article2018

1Ghent University, Gent, Belgium

Corresponding Author:

Robin Devroe, Department of Political Science, Ghent University,

Universiteitstraat 8, Gent 9000, Belgium.

Email: Robin.Devroe@UGent.be

Political Gender Stereotypes in a

List-PR System with a High Share

of Women MPs: Competent Men

versus Leftist Women?

Robin Devroe1 and Bram Wauters1

Abstract

On the basis of a candidate’s sex, voters ascribe particular personality traits, capacities, and opinions to candidates

(often to the detriment of women), which are referred to as political gender stereotypes. The prevalence of political

gender stereotypes has almost exclusively been investigated in the United States. As the presence of these stereotypes

is highly dependent on contextual factors, we switch the context and investigate whether they are also present in a List-

Proportional Representation (PR) system with a high share of women in parliament spread over different parties. The

results of our experimental study, conducted in Flanders (Belgium), provide evidence for the existence of stereotypical

patterns. The differences in perceived issue competence are, however, rather small and not always unequivocal, but

larger differences were found in terms of ideological position. This leads us to conclude that misperceptions about

women’s ideological orientation might be persistent and difficult to overcome. Moreover, our results demonstrate

that the argument that female politicians are perceived as more leftist because they disproportionately belong to leftist

parties does not hold, as female politicians are rather equally spread over the different parties in Belgium.

Keywords

gender, political representation, public opinion, political psychology, survey experiments