Gender, Germs, and Governors: Masculinity and Leadership in the COVID Pandemic

• In Event: Gender Dynamics on the Campaign Trail and in the Statehouse

Abstract

This paper will address how the concept of political masculinity (Starck and Sauer, 2014) informs public responses to U.S. governors’ policies related to the spread of the COVID-19 virus in their states. We proceed from the premise that the expectations citizens have of their elected officials are shaped by gender norms and perceptions of masculinity in particular. When governors ordered restrictions such as mask mandates, business shutdowns, curfews, and lockdowns, citizens and other politicians (including Donald Trump) responded publicly with approval or disapproval, often couched in gendered terms. We explore whether citizens and politicians responded to male governors ordering protective public health responses differently than they responded to female governors. In the case of male governors, observers who saw restrictive policies as protective could argue from the standpoint that masculinity properly enacted entailed “protection” and “defense” against a foe; those who saw the same policies as unnecessary or inappropriate could deride the governors adopting them as “weak” (i.e. insufficiently masculine). Female governors likewise faced constituencies bearing expectations of their governors’ enactment of political “masculinity” and were in some cases (such as with Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan) evaluated more harshly than their male counterparts when imposing COVID-related restrictions. We compare responses to male and female governors’ policies while making an effort to control for differences in the policies themselves, the governors’ party, the state caseload, and other explanatory factors.

Authors

• Valerie Sperling, Clark University

• Robert G. Boatright, Clark University