Gendered Political Socialization and Children’s Political Interest and Ambition

• In Event: Gender Stereotypes about Leadership: Development and Consequences

Abstract

Gendered socialization patterns begin early in life and persist to adulthood. Do these gendered patterns extend into children’s view and stereotypes about politics and their own interest in political engagement? To answer this question, we advance a theoretical framework we call gendered political socialization, which links children’s gender socialization and political socialization as two intersecting processes of a child’s experience.

The first process is gender socialization, where children internalize gender stereotypes (Gooden & Gooden, 2001; Letendre, 2007; Liben et al., 2002) and learn to conform to the expectations for their sex. For example gender socialization leads girls to value nurturance and caring for others and boys to be competitive, assertive and independent (Eagly et al., 2004). Second, in the process of political socialization, children learn that the political world is male-dominated and masculine (Cassese et al., 2014; Lay et al., 2019). Operating in parallel, gender socialization and political socialization produce conditions for children to infer that political leaders are men – and where girls express less interest in politics and in pursuing political roles because those roles conflict with their defined gender roles. Gendered political socialization constitutes an essential framework toward understanding disparities in the political development of children.

We look for evidence of gendered political socialization in novel data from interviews and surveys of more than 1,600 U.S. children in grades 1-6 across four research locations. Our analyses focus on two separate and distinct hypotheses about a gendered political socialization process, including: 1) that children perceive politics as masculine and political leaders as male and 2) that girls will be less interested and ambitious than boys. To assess children’s gendered views of political leadership, we develop and report findings from a new measure, the Draw a Political Leader task (DAPL), adapted from the Draw a Scientist task (Chambers, 1983; Miller et al., 2018). To assess gender gaps, we rely on children’s interest in politics and political careers.

We find compelling evidence regarding both indicators of a gendered political socialization process. Children overwhelmingly draw male political leaders. Among the small number of children who do draw women, young girls draw women leaders more frequently than do young boys, but this gap closes as children age as girls become less likely to draw women (see Figure 1). Gender gaps in ambition and interest start young and girls lose interest at faster rates than boys (see Figure 2). And, political socialization and gender socialization interact: boys who draw male leaders are the most ambitious and interested in politics. The difference we observe in children may later be reflected in adult gender gaps and women’s underrepresentation in politics (CAWP, 2019; Wolbrecht & Campbell, 2007).

Authors

• Mirya R. Holman, Tulane University
  Presenting Author

• Angela Bos, College of Wooster
  Non-Presenting Author

• J. Celeste Lay, Tulane University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jill S. Greenlee, Brandeis University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Zoe Oxley, Union College
  Non-Presenting Author