Perceived Competency Based on Gender

What were we interested in?

    Since at least the 1970's, gender studies as a subfield of Political Science has been on the rise. Women's representation in government worldwide remains for the most part disproportionate to that of men, constituting an issue that deserves attention. There are many explanations for why this is: women are recruited less, they show less political ambition, they show higher aversion to competitive environments, etc. The explanation we were interested in researching is called the "double bind," which is what it is called when women cannot be simultaneously perceived as both feminine and competent. Due to our interest in this, the research for our study focused on how gender impacts public perception of competence. In addition, because there is extensive literature on the differing preferences of political parties in issue stances and when choosing candidates, we wanted to consider this as a factor as well. These overlapping interests resulted in our research question: how does a politician's gender influence the electorate's perception of their competency, and how does this differ across the two major U.S. parties? We hypothesized that due to more intense scrutiny of female candidates by the Republican party, there would be a statistically significant difference between how parties rated competency based on gender, with Democratic voters giving female politicians higher scores. 

What was our research design?

    To answer this question, our research partnership decided to conduct a survey experiment. This survey consisted of a fictional speech made by a politician we states was a state senator, as well as questions relating to the senator's competence. These questions included, "On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate the competency of this senator?" "How likely would you be to vote for this senator in an election?" and finally "After reading this speech, would you be confident in your community's ability to rebuild?" In addition to these competency-related questions, we included basic demographic questions which asked for information such as race, age, education level, gender, etc. Our survey randomly assigned participants to one of three groups: a control gender-neutral group, a female senator treatment group, and a male senator treatment group. In other words, the only factor that differed across all groups was whether they were told the gender of their politician, and if so, what that gender was. 

    This survey was distributed primarily online through the social media platform known as "Reddit." While we acknowledge that using a generally center-left and young-skewing platform may be a possible limitation to our research, we believe our results are still general, and we sought a number of different forums which ranged all over the ideological scale to distribute our survey. Thanks to an overwhelming response and a final n of 4,762, we were able to effectively analyze our results. 

What were our results?

    We analyzed the data using regression analysis. Our results showed that party was not a significant factor in perceiving competence based on gender. Republican respondents from both the male and female groups gave an average competency score of 7.36. Democrats in the male group gave an average competency score 7.46 while Democrats in the female group gave an average competency score of 7.36. However, this difference was not statistically significant. In addition to competency, party also had little to no effect on how respondents rated confidence in the ability to rebuild. Adversely, there was an overall trend of respondents being more willing to vote for politicians in the male senator group, but thus difference was not statistically significant. 

    In light of these results, my partner and I think that our gender signaling may have been too subtle. Previous research indicates that gender should have been a contributing factor in competency perception, and the lack of any significance concerning gender in our results leads us to believe the survey could have emphasized it more. 

    Although party did not turn out to be a significant factor as we had predicted, there were four variables that did yield significant results in attributing the perceived competence of a senator. Certain groups in the race, education level, age, and gender variables proved to provide significant results regardless of gender of the senator. For race, Hispanic, Pacific Islander, and Indigenous respondents gave the senators significantly lower competency scores, as did respondents ages 25-34 in the age variable. This was when compared to White respondents and respondents aged 35-44. For education level, those with a high school degree or more gave senators significantly higher competence scores, as did females. This was when compared to those with a high school degree or less and males. Although our research did not prove significant along the lines of the senator's gender or political party, these existing significant results provide ground for further study perhaps in analyzing which groups have less trust in government and why. 

“Gone with the Wind”

Ideological consistency is a beautiful and rare thing. So rare in fact that I could easily imagine Indiana Jones searching for it in an ancient Lost temple… which I’ll include for your enjoyment.

I didn’t invoke Indiana Jones with the title of this blog though, I invoked Gone with the wind, and here is why. Even though the average person may not be the most consistent, they tend to change positions slowly. There’s a gradual shift from one belief to the next. The winds of today’s political climate though seem to be carrying people from one position to the next with increasing rapidity. To illustrate this, I’ll provide an example from my recent Facebook feed.

This meme and others like it are a pretty common part of the current political culture, and they seem to represent a striking ideological inconsistency. For context, this meme was posted by a conservative friend and a diehard republican. Where in the past, this individual would have championed the right of any businesses to do whatever they want on their property, suddenly the mask issue has become so important that the rights of businesses don’t matter. If any person were to ask him about his positions on private property rights, then he would undoubtedly uphold he would and still does uphold private property rights and the rights of business while on company property, not realizing the hypocrisy of his posts. This issue isn’t just cropping up among conservative either. My friends on the left have been just as guilty of these shenanigans.

Expressive Partisanship

            The example above highlights a political science concept known as expressive partisanship. As a little bit of background, there are two forms of partisanship that are relevant to this discussion. The first is Instrumental Partisanship, and the other is Expressive Partisanship. Instrumental partisanship is a form of rationality-based relationship to the party. This way of looking at a voter behavior explains party loyalty in terms of ideology, policy preferences, and candidate options. A person that acts based on Instrumental Partisanship would stay with their party because that party shares their goals, or because the party is effective at passing legislation that the individual supports. They would also be likely to cut ties if the party were to abandon the principles of the voter. The Expressive model of partisanship looks at things differently. Expressive partisanship represents a psychological, identity-based, or potentially an emotional connection to the party. For a person that exhibits expressive partisanship, the party’s short-term positions don’t matter as much as supporting the team (party) against the evil opposition.

            Expressive partisanship also ties to another political science concept that bears weight in this situation and is known as “Partisan Motivated Reasoning.” Motivated reasoning happens when an individual takes in information with the underlying goal of proving their own position. When tied to partisanship, this results in a mentality that allows an individual to discount and filter out dissonant information, or at least recolor it so that it fits the broader narrative of the party. It has also been shown to have the effect of allowing a member of a party to accept changes in party position because the voter makes proving the party right their primary goal rather than finding the correct position to take on an issue.

Although neither expressive partisanship nor partisan-motivated reasoning represents a perfect representation of how the world works, both models provide some insight into what happened with my friend and the many others that I’ve seen posting similar things. In the heated climate of today’s politics, these friends that have formed deep ties to their respective political parties are following the cues of the broader organization. In the case of my republican friend, he seems to be following the lead of party elites in opposing masks. Although this may have started with opposition to government mask orders, attacks from the other side lead the conservatives to take harder and harder stances on masks, to the point where the conservative ends up arguing that a business can’t regulate the actions of others on their property. In doing so, he offers us an example of both expressive partisanship and motivated partisan reasoning.

So What?

Developing a partisan identity is pretty common. Just think of the last time you said, “I’m a Democrat” or “I’m a Republican.” The important thing is not to get so wrapped up in your partisan identity that you lose track of what you actually believe. In the build-up to the election, the parties have every reason to move between positions and attack each other in any way they can. If you don’t want to end up accidentally supporting positions you oppose or fighting positions you support, then a good solution is to pay extra attention to your goal when learning new information. Make sure that your primary aim is to get closer to the truth rather than to confirm your opinions. Otherwise, you may find your that your beliefs have been swept away by the ever-changing winds of