Do Voters Punish Women Politicians More?

Abstract

Despite a rich literature on gender stereotypes, few studies consider whether voters reward/punish women politicians differently than their men counterparts for their policy records. To study this question, we conducted a conjoint survey experiment with a quota-based nationally representative sample of 1495 American citizens. The experiment focuses on electing one of two hypothetical councillors (keeping their political experience constant) to become a mayor. We find that voters do not penalize women politicians more for breaking campaign promises. In fact, they are at least as likely to reward women politicians for keeping their promises compared to men politicians. This is true across genders and political parties.