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The Effect of Protesters’ Gender on Public Reactions to Protests and Protest Repression

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 March 2024

MARTIN NAUNOV Open the ORCID record for MARTIN NAUNOV [Opens in a new window]
MARTIN NAUNOV*
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, United States
*
Corresponding author: Martin Naunov, PhD Candidate, Department of Political Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, United States, naunovm@live.unc.edu.
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Abstract

This study examines how protesters’ gender shapes public reactions to protests and protest repression. Using an original survey experiment, I demonstrate that protests involving extensive participation by women are perceived as less violent and meriting of repression than male-dominated protests. But perceptions of female protesters vary. Patriarchy-defiant female protesters like feminists are deemed more deserving of repression despite being perceived as equally likely to be peaceful as female protesters who emphasize patriarchy-compliant femininities, such as women who highlight their roles as mothers and wives. This, I show, is because patriarchy-defiant women are viewed as more immoral, which renders their protest accounts less trustworthy when they clash with government propaganda seeking to legitimize repression. These findings underscore the value of disaggregating the binary category of man or woman when examining sentiments toward political agents and of considering stereotypes when studying perceptions, and ultimately the risks and effectiveness, of protest movements.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 119 , Issue 1 , February 2025 , pp. 135 - 151
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of American Political Science Association

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