Does Exposure to Gender-Biased Policy Erode Support for Governing Authority?

• In Event: The Political Economy of Gender in Globalization Politics

Abstract

We argue that exposure to discriminatory policy can reduce support for the governing institutions that produce those policy outcomes. Focusing on gender, we construct a pre-registered, experimental test of this argument using hypothetical trade policy outcomes as the stimulus, randomly exposing experimental subjects to import tax rates on women’s and men’s clothing that are gender equal, biased toward women, biased toward men, or no policy at all. We administer the instrument to voting age populations in Canada and Germany and assess the impact of the treatment on subjects’ preferences for policy influence between the government responsible for trade policy—the central government of Canada and the EU—and an alternate level of government—Canada’s provincial governments and the central government of Germany, respectively. Preliminary results suggest exposure to gender-biased policy, particularly if biased against the subject’s gender, results in a shift of preferred policy influence away from the responsible government.

Authors

• Timm Betz, Washington University in St. Louis

• David Fortunato, University of California, San Diego

• Diana Z. O'Brien, Washington University in St. Louis