Madame Justice Will Save Our Democracy: Women and Bias in Transitional Regimes

• In Event: Courts in Transition, Courts in Crisis

Abstract

While existing literature has established that women leaders are stereotyped as being more likely to uphold the norms of democracy, we have yet to examine the power of this effect in the non- democratic context. In this paper, we address this gap and argue that the context of regime transition cultivates a unique dynamic in which the stereotypes associated with women justices become especially valuable to both citizens and the state, and that this value is particularly high because of the transitional nature of the regime. Further, we argue that this perception of women as contributing to the health of the democracy is not constant across all citizens equally; instead, those people with high levels of hostile bias against women are more likely to view women as the potential saviors of the democracy. To test our theories, we offer original survey data from Thailand and Poland, two countries in the midst of regime transition. We find evidence that suggests that the impact of women justices on assessments of democratic health is indeed dependent on hostile bias in Thailand, but that the relationship is more complicated in Poland. There, we find that the effect of women justices is only conditional on hostile bias for those respondents who identify with the traditional conservative political parties.

Authors

• Christopher Shortell, Portland State Universiy

• Melody E. Valdini, Portland State University