Perceptions of Gender Diversity and American Support for Inclusion

• In Event: Are Women Electable?

Abstract

Research on public opinion indicates that by-in-large the American public would prefer institutions that are more gender inclusive than the memberships of most current institutions (Dolan and Sanbonmatsu 2008). Moreover, the public generally feels more warmly towards institutions---believing institutions function well, are competent, and responsive---when they believe that women are included in the membership (Stauffer 2020). At the same time, little is known about the public’s support for increasing women’s representation in office, or the types of mechanisms that the public would endorse to enhance gender diversity. In this article, I argue that American support for increasing women’s presence in office is directly tied to misperceptions about women’s current representation in office. Using data from a nationally representative sample of 1,000 Americans, I find that a significant number of Americans overestimate the percentage of women in office, which ultimately depresses their support for a number of diversity enhancing measures such as candidate recruitment programs, gender quotas, etc. These findings offer important insights into the factors that motivate American support for gender diversity; moreover, this paper offers one of the first assessments of how American support for women’s representation varies across diversity enhancing policies.

Author

• Katelyn E. Stauffer, University of South Carolina