Relegated to Women’s Affairs? Gender Roles and Candidate Preferences in Qatar

• In Event: Women, Governance, and Changing Gender Norms in MENA and South Asia

Abstract

Elections are relatively new phenomena in Arab Gulf monarchies, including in Qatar where local electoral contests are often treated as test cases for national legislative elections which have yet to be scheduled. However, little is known about how the public views women candidates in these democratic experiments or about how gender stereotypes may shape their role in government going forward. Traditional but evolving gender roles typify Arabian Gulf societies, making Qatar an interesting case for study. This paper examines to what extent public evaluations of female candidates accord with traditional views about which areas of governance are appropriate for women. It uses gender role congruity theory (Benstead, Jamal, and Lust 2015) to assess whether public sentiment relegates women to so called “women’s affairs” such as education and health but downgrades their ability to make contributions in more masculine areas such as economics. Furthermore, the paper uses status discontent theory (Morgan and Buice 2013) to examine the divergent views of men and women in the public with respect to female candidates. Status discontent theory posits that as women become more empowered, men will hold to traditional values because their position in society is threatened. According to this theory, men are more likely to prefer that female candidates keep to “women’s affairs” as elected officials.

In contrast to many Western democracies where separation of church and state is common in varying degrees, the Qatari state sponsors Sunni Islamic activities. It is also clear that citizens, who are themselves quite religious, expect the government to represent their views in this area (Shockley and Gengler 2016). Therefore, this paper considers the role of the female candidates in promoting Islamic values within the local government. While conservative Islamic gender norms have been associated with decreased freedom and political participation (Angrist 2012), it is unclear how this will translate into public opinions about the ability of women to promote Islam from within the local government. Thus, the analysis probes public views on whether religious promotion should be considered part of women’s affairs in governance.

The paper use data from a nationally-representative pre-election survey of adult Qatari citizens fielded just prior to the 2015 municipal council elections. The survey included a conjoint experiment that asked respondents to evaluate hypothetical candidates for the council. The candidate profiles included randomized information for candidate first and last name, as proxies for gender and sectarian affiliation. It also included randomized levels of education and job experience and a religiosity statement. Respondents were then asked to evaluate the candidate in several ways, including overall competence, competence in four different issue areas and whether they would vote for him or her. Issue areas included the economy (a masculine domain), education (a feminine domain), religion (a dubious domain), and the environment (a neutral domain).

Findings indicate that evaluations of the female candidate differ considerably between male and female survey participants, with females being considerably more supportive of the female candidate in the feminine domain of education. These findings are somewhat supportive of status discontent theory. However, in other ways the findings support role congruity theory. For instance, both men and women respondents view the female candidate as less qualified in the domain of economics. With regard to religion, male respondents have weak preferences for the female candidate, but female respondents do not make gender distinctions. Instead, female respondents prefer candidates with more education in the area of religious promotion while male respondents do not distinctions based of education. Thus, the paper moves beyond examination of general support for women in public office to provide a theoretically motivated exploration of patterns of support for women in particular aspects of political representation.

Author

• Bethany Shockley, American University of Sharjah