Making Politics Male Again? Explaining Men's Political Ambition

• In Event: Unintended Consequences of Reforms for Gender Equality

Abstract

Women’s political ambition is well studied. Most research finds that women are less ambitious than men and seeks to identify solutions for closing the gender gap. Though important, the focus on women's ambition tacitly assumes men are the norm and thus fails to raise an important question: why are men overly ambitious? The daily work of politics happens through men’s homosocial networks and relationships, and the symbols, rituals, and architecture of government normalize the presence of men and male bodies. Though much attention has been paid to how political processes and outcomes are gendered, few studies ask what this gendering means for men’s political identity. We argue that men's historic and contemporary dominance of politics affects men's political ambition. In particular, we posit that men become more politically ambitious when exposed to messaging about politics as a male space. To test this claim we conduct survey experiments with a nationally representative sample of U.S. citizens. We vary exposure to “two-minute civics lessons,” videos that depict either all-male or gender-balanced groups of political leaders. We find that messages that highlight the contributions of America’s “founding fathers” significantly increase men’s political ambition, a trend driven by white men and Republican men. We also examine whether similar patterns hold when focusing on more contemporary political figures. We discuss how our findings speak to the current political moment, in which messages of men performing great deeds resonate with members of historically dominant groups.

Authors

• Amanda Clayton, Vanderbilt University

• Diana Z. O'Brien, Rice University

• Jennifer M. Piscopo, Occidental College