Narratives of Success: Women Politicians and Young Women’s Political Engagement

• In Event: Experiments on Social Media, the Internet, and Political Engagement

Abstract

How does exposure to prominent female politicians affect the political efficacy, interest, and political ambition of young women, and how can women politicians talk about their own careers in terms that increases young women’s involvement in politics? Successful women politicians are often invited to speak to women audiences about their careers in politics. When doing so, many perceive that they walk a fine line: They want to be truthful about the challenges they had to overcome, while at the same time encouraging young women to engage, rather than disengage (Gillard and Okonjo-Iweala 2022). We hence ask: Do the narratives that women politicians provide to others about their own success matter? Are they more effective at drawing young women in when they talk about their involvement as a collective experience, where they could rely on the support of other women, than when they emphasize their individual resilience in overcoming adversity? We recruited 600 women between the ages of 18 and 30 to participate in a panel survey and then randomly assigned participants to attend one of two webinars with an internationally renowned former head of government, Julia Gillard, the first and only female Prime Minister of Australia, or to an untreated control group. We find that being assigned to participate in either webinar increased political efficacy and women’s interest in getting involved in politics, but it did not affect propensities to donate to a well-known women’s organisation. Although women clearly perceived the differences in the content of the two webinars, and they were better able to identify with the politician in the collective action condition, we cannot reject that the two narrative frames were approximately equally effective at increasing women’s political involvement. In practice, this is good news for women politicians: Whatever narrative of success best reflects their experience, they can draw young women into politics.

Authors

• Susannah Hume, King's College London

• Florian Foos, London School of Economics and Political Science