The Effects of Women Candidates on Adolescents’ Political Attitudes

• In Event: Political Resources and Gender

Abstract

From Hillary Clinton’s cracked ceiling to Elizabeth Warren’s pinky promises, women candidates often frame their candidacies as opportunities to advance the political empowerment and engagement of women and girls. Advocates argue that more women political leaders signal a more open, fair, and representative political system and provide evidence of the capacity of women for political leadership to women and men alike.

In the U.S., the presence of women candidates has been associated with greater political engagement among younger women and adolescent girls in particular. However, previous research has paid less attention to the impact of women politicians on beliefs about democracy or about women as political leaders. In this paper, we employ a survey experiment in an adolescent sample to gauge the impact of exposure to women candidates on not only political engagement, but attitudes about the responsiveness of the political system and beliefs about the political capacities of women. In addition to questions about gender, we also address the role of partisanship in mediating these effects; in a time of severe partisanship, co-partisan women may have a bigger impact on adolescents than out-partisans. Our research features a hard-to-survey population—adolescents—and oversamples of minority populations, permitting us to further explore the intersections of race and gender.

Authors

• Christina Wolbrecht, University of Notre Dame

• David E. Campbell, University of Notre Dame