The Lady’s Not for Turning? Candidate Gender and Position Switching

• In Event: How Do Political Parties Adapt Their Communication and Representation?

Abstract

Why are women underrepresented in political leadership roles worldwide? The current study contributes to answering this question by focusing on the gendered effect of candidate strategies. We study the consequences of repositioning on candidate electoral support and investigate the role of candidate gender. We hypothesize that because female candidates are subject to negative stereotypes when it comes to political leadership roles, a female candidate changing tack on major policies will be punished more severely relative to male candidates. Positional inconsistency is expected to confirm and activate negative stereotypes about female leadership qualities, such as being less assertive and less dominant. We further study whether the gendered effect of repositioning will be exacerbated on feminine issues and when a female candidate becomes more ideologically radical. To test these hypotheses, we conduct a conjoint survey experiment on nationally representative samples in the US and the UK.

Authors

• Zeynep Somer-Topcu, University of Texas at Austin

• Mohamed Nasr

• Elizabeth N. Simas, Texas A&M University