Today is the day! We
are now less than two hours away from unveiling the next president
of the United States. So while you are on edge waiting to hear the
results, I hope you enjoy reading a little bit about the research on gender
stereotypes and sexism in the US elections. Either way, this election year
has been a historical one. A woman has finally made it this
far. Regardless of who you're siding with, you have
to give Hillary Clinton some credit for making it in a male dominated
political system.
Gender stereotypes
have always played a big role in political leadership positions and the
acceptance rate of women. Previous research pointed towards leadership traits associated with more
"masculine" characteristics. The stereotype still stands today where
leaders that are tough, assertive and outspoken are viewed more positively and
leaders that are caring, compassionate and nurturing (among other
"feminine" traits) are not perceived as favorable to voters.
A recent 2016 study
conducted by Nichole Bauer at the University of Alabama reports finding that
applying counterstereotypic gender strategies for women running political
elections works to their advantage. Bauer constructed scenarios where people
were exposed to fake newspaper articles discussing male and female political
candidates that demonstrate counterstereotypic traits, meaning that male
candidates were presented with either masculine or feminine traits and female
candidates were presented with either masculine or feminine traits.
Participants in her experiment indicated that counterstereotypic female
candidates were viewed more positively whereas counterstereotypic male
candidates were not. So in general, and confirming previous studies made, male
traits were increasingly associated with favorability. Women in leadership
positions who demonstrated 'masculine' traits were not viewed any less
favorable.
You might think that
using counterstereotypic strategies leads to backlash on female candidates for
acting like men. Bauer, however, found that women using counterstereotypic
strategies were viewed as leaders and not as women, whereas men with 'masculine'
leadership traits are viewed as just being men, leaving women at a slight
disadvantage.
Contrary to Bauer's
findings, a lot of sexist remarks are still observed in some media outlets
regarding the current elections especially. The video in the link above shows a reporter
commenting on the way Clinton is addressing the public and criticizes her for
yelling as 'she is acting as if she is confident with herself'. This might
differ from Bauer's research because of the complexity of the US elections, and
also because let's be real, jerks do exist.
So next time
you run for student council or other leadership positions, don’t be afraid to
raise your voices and bring out that confidence! I have to admit I envy the
US for having a strong female candidate that had high acceptance ratings as our
last Canadian female prime minister was in office for only about 5 months. To
sum it all, using counter-stereotypic strategies have proven to benefit women in
being perceived more favorable by voters. The applicability of this research on
a larger scale, however, is still questionable as we have still not seen the
results applied to the US elections. Bauer, N. M. (2016). The effects of counterstereotypic gender strategies on candidate evaluations. Political Psychology, doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/pops.12351
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