Bringing home federal spending projects to the district is a common reelection strategy for members of the U.S. Congress, and congresswomen tend to outperform congressmen in securing district spending. However, for legislators to turn distributive benefits into higher approval and electoral rewards, constituents must recognize that public spending has taken place in their community and attribute credit to the correct public official. I theorize that congresswomen face a gender bias when claiming credit for federal projects, and I test this theory through an online survey experiment. Contrary to expectations, I find no evidence that legislator gender influences the public’s reaction to congressional credit claims, indicating that congresswomen can effectively use distributive politics to counter gendered vulnerability in the U.S. Congress. This research advances the literature on gender and politics by investigating whether a gender bias in credit claiming prevents congresswomen from turning their representational efforts into electoral capital.

Female attorneys at the U.S. Supreme Court are less successful than male attorneys under some conditions because of gender norms, implicit expectations about how men and women should act. While previous work has found that women are more successful when they use more emotional language at oral arguments, gender norms are context sensitive. The COVID-19 pandemic prompted perhaps the most radical contextual shift in Supreme Court history: freewheeling in-person arguments were replaced with turn-based teleconference arguments. This change altered judicial decision-making and, I argue, justices’ assessments of attorneys’ gender performance. Using quantitative textual analysis of oral arguments, I demonstrate that justices implicitly evaluate gender performance with different metrics in each modality. Gender-normative levels of emotional language predict success in both formats. Function words, however, only predict success in teleconference arguments. Given gender’s salience at the Supreme Court and in broader society, my findings prompt questions about the extent to which women can substantively impact case law.

We investigate the gender gap in issue attention among members of parliament (MPs) by applying automated text analytic techniques to a novel data set on Italian parliamentary speeches over a remarkably long period (1948–2020). We detect a gendered specialization across issues that tends to disappear as women’s shares in parliamentary groups increase. We then investigate whether women’s access to previously male-owned issues brings with it a different agenda, operationalized as a different vocabulary. We detect a U-shaped pattern: language gender specificity is high when female MPs are tokens in parliamentary groups with a large preponderance of men; it decreases when their shares start increasing and grows again when they constitute a considerable minority. We argue that this pattern is consistent with the theory of tokenism, and it is produced by the interlinkage of commitment to shared norms and the distribution of “activation thresholds” among female MPs.

To advocate for restrictive immigration policies, conservative U.S. politicians have advanced a narrative that Latino immigrants commit violent crimes against White women. This framing of immigrant threat builds on a long history of similar anti-Black discourse and activates racialized ideas about protecting femininity. I demonstrate how the identities of purported victims of immigrant crime connect attitudes about immigration with benevolent sexism—a superficially positive, protective attitude toward particular types of women. An original survey experiment shows that benevolent sexism is activated when victims of immigrant crime are White women. Using nationally representative survey data, I show that the benevolent face of sexism has a notable impact on the immigration attitudes of White Americans, particularly when it comes to the protectionist policy of policing of the U.S.-Mexico border.

This article offers an innovative way of understanding gender balance in parliaments. Motivated by research documenting how newcomers are disadvantaged during their first term in office, while senior members enjoy certain privileges, we want to find out how common women are among senior members of parliaments. We launch an institutional approach comprising three seniority measures to study gender gaps in political endurance to find out whether, where, and when men are more likely than women to be parliamentary seniors. Our analysis using data from seven countries in Western Europe and two countries in North America (1965–2020) shows very high gender gaps across the three measures. Thus, despite an increased level of female representation, women still constitute a small part of the exclusive group of senior members of parliament. Our findings extend the research documenting that women and men largely have equally long parliamentary careers, emphasizing the need to understand gender balance in multidimensional terms.

In the United States, Black women have been touted as the saving grace of the Democratic Party. Using data from the 2016 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey, a cooperative, user-driven data set that provides a large and diverse sample of racial and ethnic groups in the United States, we develop a deeper understanding of the role of partisanship and civic duty in Black women’s support for Hillary Clinton and their political participation. We take an intersectional approach and examine Black women’s politics alongside that of their white female and Black male counterparts. We find that Black women are motivated by civic duty to participate in elections, whereas civic duty does not motivate Black men and white women.

Does information about the way victims of gender-based violence (GBV) are treated by the police influence evaluations of government policies to combat gender-based violence? I theorize that because most citizens have incomplete information about such policies, information about procedural fairness should be given more weight when forming evaluations of the government’s performance in this domain. Using original experiments embedded in public opinion surveys collected from Brazil, I find that information about procedural unfairness powerfully predicts more critical evaluations of GBV laws and the government’s performance in helping victims. In addition, these critical opinions influence bystander intervention attitudes. Mediation analysis confirms that views of procedural unfairness are critical in explaining these effects. The implications of the findings for the implementation of specialized services are discussed in the results and conclusion.

Women who ran for office in 2018 used a variety of strategies on the campaign trail, with some highlighting more masculine traits and others more feminine traits, but the latter was more common than in prior years. We ask how effective these strategies are for trait evaluations, perceptions of leadership and competence, likeability, and vote choice and how this effect varies based on respondent’s views about the role of women in society. To explore these relationships, we use data from a two-wave panel conducted in the winter of 2019. Results from our experiment show that female candidates who highlight more masculine traits are perceived as more agentic, less communal, and more competent, and, importantly, they do not appear to suffer from a backlash effect. Those higher in sexism also evaluate women who display these qualities as more competent, though as less warm and likable.

When a party selects an out lesbian as its leader, do women and LGBT people evaluate that leader more positively? And do they become more likely to vote for that party? We answer these questions using the case of Kathleen Wynne, premier of Ontario, Canada, from 2013 to 2018. We draw on four large-sample surveys conducted by Ipsos before and after the 2011 and 2014 Ontario elections. We compare shifts in best premier choice and vote choice among non-LGBT men, non-LGBT women, LGBT men, and LGBT women from 2011 to 2014. We find gender and LGBT affinity in leader evaluations. However, we find that only non-LGBT women and LGBT men were more likely to vote Liberal after Wynne became leader. This article contributes to research on affinity by examining LGBT affinity in a real-world election and the intersection of gender and LGBT affinity.

Donald Trump’s surprising level of support among U.S. Latina/o voters in 2016 and his improved performance in the 2020 election posed a puzzle for Latina/o politics scholars given his stridently anti-immigrant agenda. Although scholars have acknowledged the political gender gap between Latinas and Latino men, few studies have outlined the theoretical basis or explored the empirical existence of gender differences in Latina/o immigration enforcement attitudes. Building on the Latina politics literature documenting Latinas’ greater engagement in solidarity work with immigrants and their greater desire for cultural transmission and the maintenance of pan-ethnic identity, I test two hypotheses. The first (the Latina/o gender hypothesis) postulates that Latinas will exhibit more liberal attitudes on matters of immigration enforcement relative to Latino men. The second (the immigrant identity hypothesis) postulates that Latinas are more likely to rely on their sense of commonality with immigrants in the formation of their immigration enforcement attitudes. Bivariate and multivariate analyses of the 2020 Collaborative Multiracial Postelection Survey support both hypotheses, which suggests not only that immigration attitudes among Latinas and Latino men are meaningfully distinct, but also that there are important structural differences underlying Latina/o beliefs in this policy area.

Because of the United States’ minimal domestic engagement with human rights, several subnational initiatives, including the Cities for CEDAW campaign, have formed to infuse human rights into local policy making. Analyzing Miami-Dade County as one locale within the Cities for CEDAW network, this article asks what happens to human rights when they are turned into urban policies. Drawing on literature theorizing the complexities of urban human rights activism and using an interpretivist framework of analysis, the article reconstructs local context features and practices promoting gender equality through the countywide CEDAW ordinance. It develops a narrative based on expert interviews and finds an unusual actor constellation in which a local officeholder led the way rather than community activists. The practices identified work within institutional constraints and highlight data collection to support informed gender policy making. The findings lead to the conclusion that both activists and scholars should think beyond the dynamics of policy formulation and more explicitly about the complexities of implementation.

Responding to those who have read and critiqued your work, such as editors and reviewers, is a central part of academic exchange. To be able to explain and defend the choices you have made in a response letter is also a key skill that takes time to develop. It is my hope that this essay will help you reflect on the process of writing these responses and provide some useful tips toward getting published.

We know that women politicians are harassed by constituents to a greater extent than men, but we know less about why this difference exists. This study tests potential drivers of hostility against women politicans using an original survey experiment with 7,500 respondents in the United States and Sweden. First, I test whether constituents hold more lenient attitudes toward hostility directed at women than men, which would make hostility in messages targeting women representatives more likely. Second, I test whether constituents prefer to direct their complaints to women, which would increase the risk of hostility by generating a higher number of angry contacts. Results from both countries show a preference for directing complaints to women representatives over men, but no evidence of more leniency toward hostility directed at women.

Since the 1990s, gender quotas have been celebrated for improving women’s equality. Yet their cross-national and longitudinal impact on attitudes toward female politicians and the mechanism through which this process occurs are not well understood. Using multilevel modeling on 87 nations, we examine how different types of quotas, with varied features and levels of strength, shape beliefs about women in politics. We give particular attention to the mechanism of visibility created by quotas in impacting attitudes. Results suggest that unlike quotas with features facilitating low visibility (i.e., weak quotas), those producing high visibility (i.e., robust quotas) significantly impact public approval of women in politics. However, the direction of this effect varies by quota type. Social context also matters. Robust quota effects—both positive and negative—are especially pronounced in democracies but are insignificant in nondemocracies. Limited differences by gender (men versus women) emerge. Theoretical and policy implications are discussed.

Stereotypical assumptions about minority candidates serving those who identify most closely with their own identity have led to heightened scrutiny of women and Black candidates’ language. Using race-gendered language on the campaign trail can undermine a candidate’s viability, as skepticism of racial and gendered language is rooted in the belief that minority candidates may be “too narrow” in their concerns. Against this backdrop, this article explores the campaign rhetoric of three mayors: Keisha Lance Bottoms of Atlanta, Lori Lightfoot of Chicago, and Muriel Bowser of Washington, DC. Analyzing 62 mayoral debates using NVivo, I find that Black women candidates leverage their lived experiences, rooted in their racial and gendered identity, more than their race and gendered counterparts when advocating for their policy preferences. This work produces key insights into identity and campaign rhetoric utilized by Black women politicians.

Women’s access to political leadership positions has increased greatly in recent decades, which calls for research concerning the conditions of women’s political leadership in more gender-balanced contexts. This article responds to this need by exploring the leadership ideals, evaluations, and treatment of men and women leaders in the numerically gender-equal Swedish parliament (the Riksdag). Drawing on interviews with almost all the current top political leaders in the Swedish parliament, along with an original survey of Swedish members of parliament, we reveal a mainly feminine-coded parliamentary leadership ideal that should be more appropriate for women leaders. Masculine practices remain, however, and women leaders continue to be disadvantaged. To explain this anomaly between ideals and practices, we argue that a feminist institutionalist perspective, which emphasizes how gender shapes a given context in multiple ways, contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of the conditions for women’s political leadership than that provided by the widely employed role congruity theory.

Underlying almost every conversation about descriptive representation are questions about whether gender does and should always matter in politics. More specifically, those conversations rest on assumptions about whether political scientists should always evaluate the performance of political actors based on their membership in historically disadvantaged groups. How one answers that question can be problematic: A “yes” suggests that democratic citizens should evaluate the performance of members of historically disadvantaged groups using criteria (burdens?) beyond those used to evaluate members of privileged groups. A “ no ” seems to challenge the theoretical arguments for why the presence of historically disadvantaged groups is necessary. Admitting that not every woman in politics is a preferable descriptive representative for women seems to implicitly support having more men in politics and, thereby, the preferences that perpetuate male dominance in politics. Faced with such a quagmire of competing assumptions, those who study descriptive representation must balance concerns about essentializing women on one hand and reinforcing male dominance in politics on the other hand.