Women Politicians’ Role Model Effects: The Influence of More Shared Identities

• In Event: Poster Session: American Politics Research & Ideas and Institutions in American Political Thought
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: American Politics Research

Abstract

Women continuously report lower levels of political interest, efficacy, and ambition to run for political office (Lawless and Fox 2010). These gender differences in political engagement constitute a potential compromise of democratic norms of equal protection of interests between groups (Burns et al. 2001). Among the public, there are high hopes for women politicians to serve as role models and inspire more women to engage in politics. However, prior studies provide mixed evidence regarding women politicians’ role model effects (Wolbrecht and Campbell 2017), thereby suggesting that additional factors beyond gender may shape role model effects of women politicians. In this paper, I draw on literature on descriptive representation, role model theory, and social identity theory to advance our understanding of women politician’s role model effects and propose an overlooked argument. I argue that women will become more inspired by women politicians with whom they also share partisan identity and more social identities beyond gender. For instance, a young, Democratic woman of color might be more inspired by Kamala Harris’ than by Sarah Palin.

Drawing on social psychological role model theory (e.g. Lockwood 2006; Morgenroth et al. 2015) and social identity theory, I argue that the underlying psychological mechanism can be thought of as a two-step process. First, women identify with a role model, and second comparing themselves to the role model has downstream effects on their own dispositions towards politics. Regarding the first step, social identity theory suggests that individuals are more able to identify with those, they share salient social identities with (Morgenroth et al. 2015). This implies that women are more able to relate to women politicians than men. However, it also implies that more social identities are relevant for identification with a politician. Partisan identity, race, age, and social class are also salient identities in the political context (Titelman 2023; Huddy et al. 2015). Therefore, shared identities on these dimensions in addition to shared gender may foster even greater identification with a political role model. Secondly, given that individuals become inspired to pursue similar achievements when they can relate to the role model, then politicians similar to oneself on more dimensions should not only be perceived as more relatable, they should also affect individuals’ own political dispositions more. Thus, I argue that women will become more politically interested and ambitious when seeing a role model with whom they share partisan and multiple social identities – compared to seeing a politician with whom they only share gender.

I explore the two-step theoretical argument with two pre-registered experiments fielded to a diverse sample of 2400 American women. Through a conjoint experiment I examine the first step of the argument: To what extent shared social identities enhance identification with politicians and perceiving a politician as inspiring. In line with the theory, I find that women perceive women politicians as more relatable and inspiring compared to men politicians. Further, shared partisan identity, race, age, and social class also all enhance how relatable and inspiring a politician is perceived as.

In the second study, I have designed a novel survey experiment with engaging video treatments to explore the second step of the theoretical argument. The videos depict a story of how a woman politician has become politically active. I manipulate exposure to the politician and similarity between the respondent and the woman politician in terms of race and partisan identity. The video experiment replicates the finding that similar politicians are perceived as more relatable. However, contrary to the expectation, the effect of seeing an inspirational video with a woman politician on women’s political interest, efficacy, and ambition is the same, whether or not the politician is similar to the respondent on race and partisan identity. While there is a tendency towards positive effects of seeing a video among White women, then there are negative effects of seeing a video among Black women.

These results have three important implications for the study of women’s representation and political role model effects: 1) the results indicate that while shared identities are important for perceptions of a politician as a role model, then shared identities with a politician do not seem to be a central component to increase women’s own political interest and ambition. 2) One-shot exposure to an information video with a successful woman politician seems to have no overall effect, implying that other stronger measures are required to increase women’s political ambition and close the gender gap. 3) If anything, there seems to be negative effect among Black women, which challenges conventional wisdom that role models have stronger effects among Black women.

Author

• Louise Halberg Nielsen, Aarhus University