“She’s Too Ambitious”: Does Seeking the Presidency Penalize Women in Politics?

• In Event: Gender and Executive Politics

Abstract

When seeking the U.S. presidency, white women like Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren, and women of color like Kamala Harris, all faced media criticism for appearing “too ambitious.” Our project interrogates the notion that women presidential candidates face an ambition penalty. In doing so, we address an apparent contradiction between the gender and politics literature, on the one hand, and real-world outcomes, on the other. Recent experimental research in American and comparative politics has failed to uncover significant respondent bias towards women, and even reveals a pro-woman bias, especially among left-party voters. Yet four Democratic women senators, all of whom enjoyed high approval ratings in their role as legislators, exited the 2020 presidential primary in defeat.

We posit that an abstract pro-women bias may not translate into a concrete electoral advantage. When women declare their presidential ambitions, they move from role congruent behavior (fulfilling their assigned governing roles) to role incongruent behavior (demanding a significant promotion). Traditional vignette experiments compare two candidates who differ only in terms of their gender, but this comparison is not the only one that matters. What also matters is the comparison between two different versions of the same woman: a competent public servant, on the one hand, and a promotion-seeking leader, on the other. Evaluations of office-holding women versus office-seeking women may especially dip for women of color, who are supposed to ‘know their place’ in America’s gendered and racialized hierarchy.

To test whether and how an ambition penalty affects candidate evaluations, we use two vignette experiments fielded with nationally-representative samples of U.S. respondents. Our first design follows the traditional set-up: we vary whether (1) the candidate is serving in congressional office or holding congressional office while launching a presidential bid and (2) whether the candidate is a man or a woman. Our second design repeats the first 2x2, but adds another treatment arm, varying whether the candidates are white, Latina/o, Black or East Asian.
Both experiments use a vignette that describes a member of Congress. In the office-holding condition, the member is described as hard-working, popular, and dutifully and competently fulling their duties; in the office-seeking condition, the member is described as leveraging their hard-work, popularity, and success into a presidential bid. We use pre-tested photos and names to underscore gender and racial/ethnic cues. Respondents field a pre-treatment question about their party identification, and they receive a vignette where the candidate matches their preferred party. Respondents are then asked to rate the candidate’s likability and electability.

We expect that women face an ambition penalty relative to men, and that this penalty will be reproduced within each racial ethic group. We then expect that women seeking higher office face an ambition penalty relative to women holding lower office, and that this penalty will also appear for women within each racial/ethnic group. However, we also posit that narratives about women of color ‘saving democracy’ may lead Democratic respondents to penalize ambitious women of color less than Republican respondents.

Preliminary results support our main hypotheses. While the pro-women bias appears when comparing women and men in the serving condition, once we compare women serving to women running, office-seeking women are viewed much less favorably than office-holding women. The ambition penalty holds across racial and ethnic groups and between office-holding and office-serving women within the same ethnic or racial group. Yet counter to our expectations about partisan identification, we find that Democratic and Republican respondents penalize ambitious women of color equally.

Taken together, our results help explain women’s persistent underrepresentation in executive office, even as their legislative representation increases. Seeing women seek the presidency, rather than being content with their current legislative role, triggers negative candidate evaluations. Voters may support women candidates in the abstract, but when faced with different versions of the same woman leader, they like the ambitious version far less.

Authors

• Jennifer M. Piscopo, Royal Holloway University of London

• Katelyn E. Stauffer, University of Georgia