7 - Gender Bias, Disrupted

Summary

Chapter 7 turns to closing the gendered qualification gap. I develop and experimentally test three strategies to close the gendered qualification gap. I show that simply providing voters with more information about female candidate qualifications is not enough to close the gendered information gap, and thereby the gendered qualification gap. Putting qualification information in context that tells voters that female candidates have more or better qualifications than male candidates effectively closes the gendered qualification gap. Self-promotion does not close the gendered qualification gap. This chapter points to the need for more research on how to disrupt the implicit biases voters bring with them to the ballot.