<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p> Electoral research has demonstrated how men and women sometimes have different political preferences. Men are typically thought to be more concerned about taxation, business policies, etc., while women care more about issues related to the welfare state. Thus, it seems obvious that stereotyping influences candidate evaluation with regard to issue competence. In this article, we investigate whether stereotyping also influences how the electorate views the communication skills of the candidates. We ask whether the gender of politicians affects the way citizens evaluate various aspects of the qualities of a political speech, and thus their support for political parties. The experiment used in this study is based on a pre- and post-stimuli questionnaire. Stimuli are videotapes of genuine political speeches (originally given by party leaders in October 2000) performed for the experiment by one female and one male actor. Our main finding is that the male “politician” was believed to be more knowledgeable, trustworthy and convincing than the female “politician” even though they presented the same speech verbatim. These differences in scores were the result of the male part of the audience consistently rating the female lower and the male higher than did the females in the audience. Among the female audience, the two politicians received almost identical scores on all traits. The candidate’s popularity and the popularity of the candidate’s party were also affected by the gender of the politician who performed the speech.</p></abstract>

Electoral research has demonstrated how men and women sometimes have different political preferences. Men are typically thought to be more concerned about taxation, business policies, etc., while women care more about issues related to the welfare state. Thus, it seems obvious that stereotyping influences candidate evaluation with regard to issue competence. In this article, we investigate whether stereotyping also influences how the electorate views the communication skills of the candidates. We ask whether the gender of politicians affects the way citizens evaluate various aspects of the qualities of a political speech, and thus their support for political parties. The experiment used in this study is based on a pre- and post-stimuli questionnaire. Stimuli are videotapes of genuine political speeches (originally given by party leaders in October 2000) performed for the experiment by one female and one male actor. Our main finding is that the male “politician” was believed to be more knowledgeable, trustworthy and convincing than the female “politician” even though they presented the same speech verbatim. These differences in scores were the result of the male part of the audience consistently rating the female lower and the male higher than did the females in the audience. Among the female audience, the two politicians received almost identical scores on all traits. The candidate’s popularity and the popularity of the candidate’s party were also affected by the gender of the politician who performed the speech.

Gender Stereotyping of Political Candidates

Dr Polit., Associate Professor, Department of Sociology and Political Science, NTNU, N-7491 Trondheim,

Department of Sociology and Political Science, NTNU, N-7491 Trondheim,

Nordicom Review

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

An Experimental Study of Political Communication

Electoral research has demonstrated how men and women sometimes have different political preferences. Men are typically thought to be more concerned about...

Gender Stereotyping of Political Candidates

Published Online: Feb 14, 2017

Page range: 17 - 32

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/nor-2017-0198

Keywords
political communication, gender, stereotypes, experiments, election campaigns, female candidates

© by Toril Aalberg

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

Gender Stereotyping of Political Candidates

Published Online: Feb 14, 2017

Page range: 17 - 32

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/nor-2017-0198

Keywordspolitical communication, gender, stereotypes, experiments, election campaigns, female candidates

© by Toril Aalberg

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

Keywords
political communication, gender, stereotypes, experiments, election campaigns, female candidates