Candidate Gender and the Political Engagement of Women and Men

Abstract

Does the presence of descriptive representation have symbolic consequences for women’s engagement in politics? Given mixed results from prior survey-based studies, I use experiments to investigate whether there is a direct psychological effect of candidate gender on voters’ interest in political engagement. By holding the features of the campaign and attributes of the candidates constant, I investigate the specific effects of candidate gender on people’s perceptions of the candidates and their desire to engage in politics. I find that women’s interest and engagement with the campaign is insensitive to the gender of the candidates, while men are less interested in participating in the election when the congressional candidate from their party is female. The mere presence of women candidates does not animate women’s engagement in campaigns.