Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T22:13:51.309Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Does Exposure to Gender Role Models Increase Women’s Political Ambition? A Field Experiment with Politicians

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2019

Florian Foos Open the ORCID record for Florian Foos [Opens in a new window]  and
Fabrizio Gilardi Open the ORCID record for Fabrizio Gilardi [Opens in a new window]
Florian Foos
Affiliation:
Department of Government, London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, United Kingdom, e-mail: f.foos@lse.ac.uk, http://www.florianfoos.net, Twitter: @florianfoos
Fabrizio Gilardi
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of Zurich, 8050 Zürich, Switzerland, e-mail: gilardi@ipz.uzh.ch, http://www.fabriziogilardi.org, Twitter:@fgilardi
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

There is a persistent gender gap in motivations to run for political office. While exposure to role models is widely believed to increase women’s political ambition, there is little field experimental evidence on whether exposure to female politicians in realistic settings can increase political ambition. We conducted a field experiment in which a sample of 612 female students was randomly assigned to receive emails inviting them to an event that included career workshops with female politicians, or no email. The treatment increased interest in the ongoing national election campaign, but, against expectations, did not have any positive effect on political ambition. Our results suggest that female politicians who discuss their experience bluntly, instead of following a motivational script, may fail to motivate other women to pursue a political career. These results highlight the need for more research into the type of events and messages that bring more women into politics.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Experimental Political Science , Volume 7 , Issue 3 , Winter 2020 , pp. 157 - 166
Copyright
© The Experimental Research Section of the American Political Science Association 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

The data, code, and any additional materials required to replicate all analyses in this article are available at the Journal of Experimental Political Science Dataverse within the Harvard Dataverse Network, at: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/BSIFTF (Foos and Gilardi, 2019). We thank Roger Gfrörer, Setareh Gharibi, Andrea Gisler, Christiane Löwe, Elisabeth Pöschl, and Sandra Plaza for their invaluable support; Andrea Häuptli, Giordano Neuenschwander, and Ester Treccani for excellent research assistance; and Stefanie Bailer, Sarah Fulton, Malu Gatto, Nathalie Giger, Sarah Lawrence, Dina Pomeranz, Eva Ranehill, Maria Sobolewska, three anonymous reviewers and the Associate Editor, Dan Rubenson, for helpful comments. This paper was first presented at the 2016 European Political Science Association Conference in Brussels. The experiment was approved by the Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences of the University of Zurich. There are no conflicts of interest to report.

References

REFERENCES

Aronow, P. M. and Middleton, J. A.. 2013. A Class of Unbiased Estimators of the Average Treatment Effect in Randomized Experiments. Journal of Causal Inference 1(1): 135–54.Google Scholar
Asgari, S., Dasgupta, N., and Stout, J. G.. 2012. When Do Counterstereotypic Ingroup Members Inspire Versus Deflate? The Effect of Successful Professional Women on Young Women’s Leadership Self-Concept. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 38(3): 370–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bamberger, Y. M. 2014. Encouraging Girls into Science and Technology With Feminine Role Model: Does This Work? Journal of Science Education and Technology 23(4): 549–61.Google Scholar
Beaman, L., Chattopadhyay, R., Duflo, E., Pande, R., and Topalova, P.. 2009. Powerful Women: Does Exposure Reduce Bias? Quarterly Journal of Economics 124(4): 1497–540.Google Scholar
Beaman, L., Duflo, E., Pande, R., and Topalova, P.. 2012. Female Leadership Raises Aspirations and Educational Attainment for Girls: A Policy Experiment in India. Science 335(6068): 582–6.Google Scholar
Betz, D. E. and Sekaquaptewa, D.. 2012. My Fair Physicist? Feminine Math and Science Role Models Demotivate Young Girls. Social Psychological and Personality Science 3(6): 738–46.Google Scholar
Broockman, D. E. 2014. Do Female Politicians Empower Women to Vote or Run for Office? A Regression Discontinuity Approach. Electoral Studies 34: 190–204.Google Scholar
Campbell, D. E. and Wolbrecht, C.. 2006. See Jane Run: Women Politicians as Role Models for Adolescents. Journal of Politics 68(2): 233–47.Google Scholar
Clayton, A. 2015. Women’s Political Engagement Under Quota-Mandated Female Representation: Evidence from a Randomized Policy Experiment. Comparative Political Studies 48(3): 333–69.Google Scholar
Foos, F. and Gilardi, F.. 2019. Replication Data for “Does Exposure to Gender Role Models Increase Women’s Political Ambition? A Field Experiment With Politicians”, JEPS Dataverse within the Harvard Dataverse Network, Harvard Dataverse, V1, doi: 10.7910/DVN/BSIFTF.Google Scholar
Fox, R. L. and Lawless, J. L.. 2004. Entering the Arena? Gender and the Decision to Run for Office. American Journal of Political Science 48(2): 264–80.Google Scholar
Fox, R. L. and Lawless, J. L.. 2014. Uncovering the Origins of the Gender Gap in Political Ambition. American Political Science Review 108(3): 499–519.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fridkin, K. L. and Kenney, P. J.. 2014. How the Gender of Us Senators Influences People’s Understanding and Engagement in Politics. Journal of Politics 76(04): 1017–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gerber, A. and Green, D. P.. 2012. Field Experiments: Design, Analysis, and Interpretation. New York: W.W. Norton.Google Scholar
Gilardi, F. 2015. The Temporary Importance of Role Models for Women’s Political Representation. American Journal of Political Science 59(4): 957–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoyt, C. L. and Simon, S.. 2011. Female Leaders Injurious or Inspiring Role Models for Women? Psychology of Women Quarterly 35(1): 143–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kanthak, K. and Woon, J.. 2015. Women Don’t Run? Election Aversion and Candidate Entry. American Journal of Political Science 59(3): 595–612.Google Scholar
Karpowitz, C., Monson, J. Q., and Preece, J.. 2017. How to Elect More Women: Gender and Candidate Success in a Field Experiment. American Journal of Political Science 61(4): 927–43.Google Scholar
Ladam, C., Harden, J. J., and Windett, J. H.. 2016. Does the Election of a Female Governor Influence Women’s Political Ambition? Working Paper.Google Scholar
Lawless, J. L. and Fox, R. L.. 2010. It Still Takes a Candidate: Why Women Don’t Run for Office. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lerner, J. and Malmendier, U.. 2013. With a Little Help from My (random) Friends: Success and Failure in Post-Business School Entrepreneurship. Review of Financial Studies 26(10): 2411–2452.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lockwood, P. and Kunda, Z.. 1997. Superstars and Me: Predicting the Impact of Role Models on the Self. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 73(1): 91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mariani, M., Marshall, B. W., and Mathews-Schultz, A. L.. 2015. See Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, and Sarah Palin Run? Party, Ideology, and the Influence of Female Role Models on Young Women. Political Research Quarterly 68(4): 716–31.Google Scholar
Preece, J. and Stoddard, O.. 2015. Why Women Don’t Run: Experimental Evidence on Gender Differences in Political Competition Aversion. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 117: 296–308.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Preece, J. R. 2016. Mind the Gender Gap: An Experiment on the Influence of Self-Efficacy on Political Interest. Politics & Gender 12(1): 198–217.Google Scholar
Silbermann, R. 2015. Gender Roles, Work-Life Balance, and Running for Office. Quarterly Journal of Political Science 10: 123–53.Google Scholar
Wolbrecht, C. and Campbell, D. E.. 2007. Leading by Example: Female Members of Parliament as Political Role Models. American Journal of Political Science 51(4): 921–39.Google Scholar
Wolbrecht, C. and Campbell, D. E.. 2017. Role Models Revisited: Youth, Novelty, and the Impact of Female Candidates. Politics, Groups, and Identities 5(3): 418–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: Link

Foos and Gilardi Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/BSIFTF
Link
Supplementary material: PDF

Foos and Gilardi supplementary material

Foos and Gilardi supplementary material
Download Foos and Gilardi supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 558.1 KB