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We investigate the level of gender parity in political news reporting at the New York Times. We apply a media sociology approach to examine how gender stereotypes, women in media leadership, and women in political leadership interact to affect the extent to which women journalists appear in bylines about domestic and foreign affairs news. We leverage an original data collection of nearly 3,000 news articles published from 2007–2020. We find several key results. First, women are more likely to appear in bylines about domestic political news than foreign affairs news. Second, we find that during Jill Abramson's tenure as executive editor the number of women writing about politics increased. Third, as the proportion of women in the U.S. Congress rises, more women appear in story bylines about political news. Fourth, while more women write about political news now compared to the past, most political news stories still have men as authors. Our findings show slow but steady improvement in the gender diversity of political news journalists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I argue that the gender-role incongruity between being a woman and the masculine stereotypes of political leadership roles will lead to more ambivalence about women relative to men and that gendered traits will comprise the content of these ambivalent attitudes. I analyze attitudinal ambivalence toward female candidates using ANES data. The results find that ambivalence is higher among voters who hold cross-pressured identities as strong partisans with sexist beliefs for both Democratic and Republican women. In 2016, individuals held stronger ambivalent attitudes about Hillary Clinton even among strong Democrats but there was very little ambivalence in attitudes about Trump. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines differences in news coverage of female candidates using a media sociology framework that examines the interplay between organizational, routine, and individual levels of influence. The analyses find that national and local newspapers are more likely to write about the political qualifications of female candidates relative to male candidates, and female journalists at local newspapers are most likely to write about women's political qualifications. Female candidates receive more feminine stereotypic coverage across newspapers, especially in all-women elections. These results uncover important differences across media organizations that affect how female candidates develop their campaign strategies and voter decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conventional wisdom suggests that women can face a punishment from voters for engaging in self-promotion. Self-promotion, highlighting your accomplishments, can be detrimental to women because such behavior violates feminine stereotypic expectations that women be modest and humble. I argue and show that voters do not punish women for engaging in self-promotion but there are different styles of self-promotion that are more beneficial to women than others. I argue that women will be most successful when they use a communal style of self-promotion that emphasizes feminine stereotypic qualities, such as compromise. Conversely, I argue that agentic forms of self-promotion, which draw on masculine qualities, will be less successful for women because agency violates feminine expectations for women. I test the effects of communal and agentic self-promotion using two experiments. The result shows two key findings. First, voters do not punish women incumbents for using agentic styles of self-promotion, but women receive more positive evaluations with communal self-promotion. Second, voters are slightly more likely to reward men for communal self-promotion relative to women legislators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article advances and tests an original theory of a "feminine homestyle" to explain how female legislators develop relationships with constituents that both mitigate the potential for gendered biases and fulfill the communal goals that motivate women to run for political office. We use an original audit study that tests legislator responsiveness to direct email communication. We show that female lawmakers are more responsive to constituent communication and more likely to display compassion and empathy in responses compared with male legislators; but we also find important differences in women's responsiveness across the race and ethnicity. Further, we find that responsive female lawmakers can change the behaviors of their male counterparts by creating stronger norms of responsiveness within legislative institutions. Our findings have important downstream implications for democratic accountability among voters and illustrate how female lawmakers substantively represent through direct communication with constituents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We develop a framework to identify how women use negative messages in political campaigns. We argue that women will be more likely to use contrast negativity, messages that include a negative message against an opponent and a positive message about the candidate sponsoring the ad, rather than attack negativity, messages that only criticize an opponent. We also identify how feminine and masculine traits emerge in negativity—a strategy we call gendered trait negativity. We analyze gendered trait negativity in television ads from the Wesleyan Media Project (WMP) for House, Senate, and gubernatorial races from 2010 to 2018. Using logistic regression models, we find that women use contrast messages more than attack messages when running against a man. Second, we find that women are more likely to highlight feminine traits over masculine traits in negative messages when their opponent is a man relative to when their opponent is a woman. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the recent surge of women of color in elected political office in the U.S., the representation of Latinas is strikingly low. Past research offers unclear conclusions as to whether Latina political candidates face biases due to the intersection of their identities as women and as ethnic minorities, and how Latinas can navigate such biases. In this study, we identify how Latinas draw on their intersectional identities as both women and ethnic minorities to develop strategic campaign messages and how voters respond to such messages. Through an analysis of campaign advertising data and an original survey experiment, we show that Latina candidates do not face an automatic disadvantage based in gender and ethnic biases, but they can benefit from the intersection of these two identities, especially among female minority voters. These results are consequential because they offer insights into how to improve the descriptive and substantive representation of marginalized groups in the U.S. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We develop and test a theory of gendered political times, which argues that the gendered political climate during an election shapes the extent to which female candidates emphasize feminine or masculine traits in campaign messages. We measure gendered electoral contexts through rigorous analyses of public opinion data and news media content of the top issues during an election, and we complement these data with an analysis of the gendered traits candidates emphasize in campaign messages during U.S. congressional election cycles from 2000 through 2018. Our results suggest that feminine electoral contexts do not necessarily lead female candidates, or male candidates, to rely on feminine traits. We find that masculine electoral contexts lead female candidates to rely more heavily on feminine traits. Our results have important implications for understanding the forces that shape the way candidates develop strategic campaign messages, and the factors that ultimately influence women's under-representation in politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On June 24, 2022, the US Supreme Court decided in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women's Health Organization (597 U.S. (2022)) to overturn the constitutional right to abortion, a seismic shift in abortion policy that makes the states key battlegrounds in fights over abortion and broader reproductive rights. This article focuses on the role of state supreme courts in setting state abortion policies. Using an original data set of state court decisions surrounding abortion from the past 20 years, the authors investigate how two overarching factors affect state supreme court decision-making on abortion. First, they track how states' political environments affect the decisions courts make about access to abortion. Second, the authors consider the scope of the abortion policy considered by the courts. The authors find that the partisan makeup of state legislatures does not influence the direction of state supreme courts' rulings on abortion issues, but it does affect the scope of abortion regulation being considered by the courts. Additionally, they find that elected judges tend to be more responsive to constituent preferences when ruling on abortion policies. Overall, these findings illustrate the multifaceted dynamics involved in state supreme courts' rulings on abortion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We draw on research from gender stereotypes and mass communication to develop and test an innovative theoretical framework of implicit and explicit gender framing. This framework delineates how and when coverage in newspapers will report on female candidates differently than male candidates. Implicit gender frames subtly draw on masculine stereotypes to reinforce patriarchal power structures through their coverage of political candidates. Explicit gender frames are the overtly sexist "hair, hemlines, and husband" coverage women receive more frequently relative to men. We argue that the print news media will be more likely to rely on implicit gender frames to elucidate differences between women and men running for political office. Using an exhaustive content analysis of Senate campaign news coverage, we find important differences in the coverage of women and men running against one another. We also find the use of explicit gender frames to be especially common in all-female races. These differences in coverage, especially in all-women contests, can perpetuate stereotypic beliefs that women lack the qualifications needed for political office among voters, and stymie women's progress toward parity in representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Female candidates face a messaging challenge. There is a strong association between masculinity and political leadership. Stressing masculinity can result in a likability backlash for female candidates often seen as lacking feminine qualities, such as warmth. Preventing a likability backlash by highlighting feminine qualities can also harm female candidates. Current scholarship offers conflicting conclusions about how female candidates balance these gendered challenges. We fill this empirical and theoretical gap with a trait-balancing theory clarifying how and when female candidates use feminine and masculine traits to manage competing expectations. We use original data merging information on candidate advertising strategies across three election cycles. We show that female candidates strategically balance masculine and feminine stereotypes in ways that often differ from their male counterparts but also differ based on female candidate partisanship and incumbency. These results are consequential because they highlight how female candidates manage gendered pressures in campaign strategies, which can affect their ability to win elections and, ultimately, women's representation in government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Politicians frequently use uncivil and even aggressive tactics in political appeals. Aggressive behavior and personality code as masculine, and voters generally value masculine traits in leaders. However, extreme displays may be off‐putting to all but the most aggressive voters. In this article, we theorize how aggressive political displays interact with gendered personality traits to shape candidate evaluations. Which voters punish candidates for aggressive behavior, and which voters give which candidates a pass? We leverage two survey experiments to investigate how voters judge intensely uncivil candidates in a political debate—verbal aggression and a physical dominance display. We find voters penalize (or even reward) candidates differently for aggressive behavior depending on their own aggressive personality traits. Our findings advance research on the distinct effects of gender over sex in politics and studies of aggression dynamics in mass politics. Our results also speak to work on the strategies available to male and female candidates with broader implications for representation and norms in democratic politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does the gender of a political leader affect policy compliance of the public during a public health crisis? State and national leaders have taken a variety of policy measures to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, with varying levels of success. While many female leaders have been credited with containing the spread of COVID-19, often through implementing strict policy measures, there is little understanding of how individuals respond to public health policy recommendations made by female and male leaders. This article investigates whether citizens are more willing to comply with strict policy recommendations about a public health issue when those recommendations are made by a female leader rather than a male leader. Using a survey experiment with American citizens, we compare individuals' willingness to comply with policy along three dimensions: social distancing, face covering, and contact tracing. Our findings show that a leader's gender has little impact on policy compliance in general during the pandemic. These findings carry important implications for successful crisis management as well as understanding how a crisis in a nonmasculine issue context influences the effectiveness of a leader's ability to implement measures to mitigate the crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current scholarship offers conflicting conclusions about whether female candidates have a feminine advantage or a disadvantage. Previous work does not consider whether voters respond similarly to all types of messages that might emphasize feminine stereotypes, such as feminine trait and feminine issue messages. I argue that voters will respond differently to trait-based feminine messages relative to issue-based feminine messages. I test the effects of trait-based and issue-based feminine messages through two survey experiments. The results consistently show that emphasizing feminine traits harms female candidates, whereas emphasizing feminine issues helps female candidates. I use role congruity theory to argue that feminine traits activate feminine stereotypes about women, and feminine issues do not activate these stereotypes. I also show that trait-based and issue-based feminine messages affect Democratic and Republican female candidates in very different ways. These results have implications for the ability of women to win elected office and reverse the pervasive underrepresentation of women in politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An implicit assumption underlying the gender stereotyping literature is that female candidates have an advantage in local elections. Two factors motivate this assumption. First, some local issues, such as the provision of social services, fit into the stereotypic strengths of female politicians. Second, as the level of office increases, so too does the perceived masculinity of the office. Research on local policymaking, however, indicates that the tasks associated with local political offices, such as economic competition with other cites, require masculine rather than feminine qualities. I integrate research on local policymaking with the gender stereotyping literature to clarify the role of gender stereotypes in local elections. Using two national survey experiments, I find that female candidates, especially Republican female candidates, benefit from emphasizing masculine stereotypes and not feminine stereotypes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing empirical research finds that female candidates have higher levels of qualifications for political office compared to male candidates. An untested assumption behind this finding is that female candidates must have stronger qualifications to overcome feminine stereotypes that characterize women as ill qualified for leadership positions. I test this assumption by drawing on psychology research to develop a theory that explains how a candidate's sex affects the way voters evaluate the qualifications of political candidates. Using innovative survey experiments, the results show that, across multiple experiments, voters hold female candidates, relative to male candidates, to more stringent qualification standards, and these higher standards limit the ability of female candidates to secure electoral support. These findings uncover a subtle but pernicious source of bias facing female candidates. The implications speak to how candidate sex affects voter decision-making and the ability of democratic institutions to select the best candidates for leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the extent to which the issues emphasized by female political candidates in American congressional elections vary based on the media platforms used to promote their messages. We develop a framework of gendered agenda-building, arguing that the pressures women face on the campaign trail are rooted in gender stereotypes and will lead women to curate more heterogeneous issue agendas compared to their male counterparts. Our framework also argues that women’s issue agendas will more likely vary across campaign communication platforms. We use an original and novel dataset of House of Representatives candidates’ communication across Twitter and television advertisements to examine the dynamics of agenda-setting for female House candidates. We find that contrary to our predictions, women are no more likely than men to have more heterogeneous agendas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing literature debates whether gender stereotypes or partisanship has a greater effect on evaluations of female candidates. Feminine stereotypes are considered incongruent with leadership roles, but partisanship is also an important cue for many voters. Complicating the influence of feminine stereotypes is that this concept overlaps with stereotypes about the Democratic Party. This manuscript examines the influence of partisanship and feminine stereotypes in how voters perceive female candidates. Using an original survey experiment, the results uncover several findings. First, partisanship and gender do not combine to activate feminine stereotypes. Second, feminine information activates feminine stereotypes for only Democratic female candidates while masculine information prevents feminine stereotyping for all candidate types. Overall, voters evaluate Democratic female candidates favorably when they have feminine or masculine information, but Republican female candidates receive evaluations that are more critical. These results suggest that feminine stereotypes and partisanship jointly affect perceptions of female candidates. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper develops a model of press-priming in which public evaluations of press performance are examined in the context of media scandals where news organizations through their own ethical lapses become the subject and conduit of priming effects. We argue that judgments about the press during a crisis depend on the activation of standing attitudes toward press freedom and media responsibility, which come into play with close attention to ongoing developments. Our model is tested with original survey data collected around two salient press scandals in Britain, one involving the now-defunct News of the World tabloid, the other the storied British Broadcasting Corporation. Support for the model is found. In the aftermath of a press crisis, attitudes toward press freedom and media responsibility are situationally activated by the unique attributes of each scandal, and these attitudes shape evaluations of credibility and support for regulation. Implications for improved understanding of the news evaluation process are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing numbers of female candidates are running for Congress in American national elections. Despite the rise in female candidates running for office, women are not significantly increasing their presence in the House and Senate. A much hypothesized influence over the electoral fates of female candidates is the role of gender stereotypes. However, political science scholars have struggled to pinpoint the effect of stereotypes on vote choice, if there is any effect. This essay compares the way social psychology and political science scholars theoretically, conceptually and empirically test for gender stereotype influence over evaluations of female candidates and politicians. Differences emerge in the theoretical assumptions made in the two disciplines, the types of measures used in research, and the empirical tests conducted to demonstrate the presence or absence of stereotypes in evaluations of women. The discussion explores how scholars studying female candidates and politicians can integrate insights from social psychology to clarify the role of stereotypes in candidate evaluation and choice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the annual meeting of the Association for Politics and the Life Sciences (APLS) held on the Indiana University campus in Bloomington, Indiana, from October 14-16, 2010. The theme of the annual meeting was "Toward Consilience: Thirty Years of the Association for Politics and the Life Sciences." The meeting included panels and presentations from scholars interested in biopolitics and related areas.