At a time of pandemics, international economic downturns, and increasing environmental threats due to climate change, countries around the world are facing numerous crises. What impact might we expect these crises to have on the already common perception that executive leadership is a masculine domain? For years, women executives’ ability to lead has been questioned (Jalalzai 2013). However, the outbreak of COVID-19 brought headlines like CNN’s “Women Leaders Are Doing a Disproportionately Great Job at Handling the Pandemic” (Fincher 2020). Do crises offer women presidents and prime ministers opportunities to be perceived as competent leaders? Or do they prime masculinized leadership expectations and reinforce common conceptions that women are unfit to lead? We maintain that people’s perceptions of crisis leadership will depend on whether the crisis creates role (in)congruity between traditional gender norms and the leadership expectations generated by the particular crisis.

Moral rhetoric presents a strategic dilemma for female politicians, who must navigate stereotypes while appealing to copartisan voters. In this article, we investigate how gender shapes elite moral rhetoric given the influence of partisanship, ideology, gender stereotypes, and moral psychology. Drawing on moral foundations theory, we examine how female and male representatives differ in their emphasis on the five foundations of care, fairness, authority, loyalty, and purity. Using the Moral Foundations Dictionary, we analyze a corpus of 2.23 million tweets by U.S. Congress members between 2013 and 2021. We find that female representatives are more likely to emphasize care and less likely to emphasize authority and loyalty than their male peers. However, when subsetting by party, we find that gender effects are most pronounced among Democrats and largely negligible among Republicans. These findings offer insight into the rhetorical dynamics of political leadership at the intersection of gender and partisan identities.

Electoral gender quotas remain contentious among many publics. One hurdle is the “principle-policy puzzle”: those who espouse gender egalitarianism may nevertheless oppose affirmative action measures because of disagreements about their necessity and worries about government overreach. Based on an original survey in Japan, where women’s underrepresentation is particularly pronounced, we identify two dimensions that drive attitudes toward quotas. First, modern sexism matters: those who attribute underrepresentation to women’s disinterest or who think that quotas will increase the number of unqualified women candidates are less likely to support quotas. Second, appropriateness matters: those who oppose government intervention in gender affairs are less likely to support quotas. Crucially, these differences hold even among those who desire more women in parliament. Our results suggest that public acceptance of quotas depends more on correcting misperceptions about structural gender barriers and the benign consequences of quotas (“policy”), rather than encouraging people to prefer more women in parliament (“principle”).

What is the impact on symbolic representation of female leaders who are seen as failures? Do women from political dynasties elicit symbolic representation? I answer these questions by analyzing how Park Geun-hye’s election as the first woman president of South Korea and her subsequent impeachment shaped voters’ perceptions of women’s potential and contribution as political leaders. Utilizing an original survey and focus groups, I argue that South Korean voters overall did not recognize Park’s election as the country’s first female president as a symbol of women’s political empowerment because of her dynastic background and her failure to promote women-friendly policies. Although she received credit for being the historic first, women across the political spectrum were concerned that the epic failure of the first female president would reinforce voters’ reluctance to vote for women. This study emphasizes the importance of adopting an intersectional approach in studying symbolic representation.

Using the case of women’s unveiling during the 2011 Egyptian uprising, I investigate how momentous political events have transformative impacts beyond the overtly “political” sphere of policies and institutions. I trace the choice to unveil among some women protesters to their involvement in collective action and show the different mechanisms that led to their decision. Specifically, I identify three pathways to unveiling: shifts in political opportunities, innovations in the repertoires of contention and the framing of unveiling, and exposure to new mobilizing structures and networks. The data for this project build upon original field research and interview data with women who removed their hijab during the 2011 Egyptian uprising. The article adds to the literature on gender and contentious politics by demonstrating the gendered effects of political opportunity structures on women’s choices around veiling.

Women have unique experiences during natural disasters, including higher risks of death, violence, and socioeconomic decline and an increase in specific reproductive health needs. However, government responses often do not directly address these women-specific needs, which can decrease women’s political trust. I investigate women’s trust in government institutions when natural disasters have recently occurred and argue that because of their unique experiences and typical government responses, women’s political trust will decline when there is a natural disaster more than men’s. I find that when there is a high number of disasters and when a larger percentage of the population is affected by disasters, women’s political trust decreases significantly, especially institutional trust. These findings are distinct from previous studies that cluster different types of political trust and support the idea that women’s experiences in a disaster may influence their relationship with institutions differently than men’s.

Research shows that masculinity and sexuality are pivotal to the leadership and success of the populist radical right (PRR). In particular, normative conceptions of masculinity, as seen in gendered nationalism, have been argued to be important to the appeal of PRR parties. However, the supply side of this dynamic remains understudied. To fill this gap, this article uses critical discourse analysis to analyze the role of masculinity and sexuality in the self-positioning and envisioned hegemonies of the most successful Dutch PRR leaders: Pim Fortuyn, Geert Wilders, and Thierry Baudet. The Dutch case is particularly insightful as it presents a diverse array of PRR parties in one country context. We found crucial similarities and differences between the discourses of these leaders. Our findings suggest that masculinity and sexuality, while constitutive at the party level, are largely negotiable or nondefining for the larger party family. These findings problematize often-made identifications of PRR politics with a one-of-a-kind conservative ideology of gender and sexuality.

Although feminist scholarship has discussed intersectionality extensively, few studies have addressed its implementation in public policies. This article fills that gap with an empirical study of the obstacles and enabling factors in implementing intersectionality in the Madrid City Council. We focus on the multiple meanings, actors, and structures involved in translating policy planning into concrete measures. Through a content analysis of policy documents, interviews, focus groups, and participant observation, our qualitative study identifies five key factors that hinder the implementation of intersectionality-informed policies: the absence of a legal framework and precise guidelines; the multiple and contrasting interpretations of intersectionality; the lack of training; the compartmentalized work structure and culture; and the unavailability and misuse of data. These findings contribute to the scholarship on the implementation of intersectionality in public policies and provide empirical-based recommendations to overcome the identified obstacles.

Gender and politics scholars are increasingly making appeals to ethnographic methodology to bring important contributions to understand the reproduction of gender, gender hierarchies, gendered relations, and their redress in parliamentary settings. This article draws upon fieldwork conducted in the U.K. House of Commons and the European Parliament and finds distinctive gendered cultures and norms in debating and working parliaments. Focusing on one dimension of this distinction—the parliamentary debating chamber—the article argues that parliamentary ethnography provides novel empirical insights into this conceptual distinction and into empirical understandings of gendered debating and working parliaments. While parliamentary ethnography is a fruitful innovation, the article discusses the drawbacks of this methodology and provides feminist reflection on ways to make it more accessible.

The topic of gender blindness is increasingly gaining the attention of researchers. Even in fields that do not commonly engage with gender, gender blindness has been recognized as a factor that has potential to limit the validity of research findings. This article explores the prevalence and implications of gender blindness in quantitative research for political science outcomes. We first reanalyze three articles recently published in the American Journal of Political Science (AJPS) to illustrate the impact of gender blindness on quantitative research. Next, we classify all articles with quantitative methodology published in the AJPS in 2018 and 2019 by the degree of gender blindness in the research design. Our findings demonstrate how gender blindness impacts outcomes and estimate its prevalence in political science. They show that accounting for gender yields more accurate results and facilitates a better understanding of political behavior and phenomena.

Analyzing unique, nationally representative data, I show that two faces of sexism—hostile and benevolent—operate in systematically different ways to shape Americans’ electoral decisions and evaluations of their leaders. In the 2016 presidential election, both fostered support for Donald Trump and opposition to Hillary Clinton. They operated differently at the congressional level, however. In analyses of actual congressional candidates and in a conjoint experiment, the impact of hostile sexism is moderated by candidate sex: those high in hostile sexism oppose (and those low in hostile sexism favor) female candidates. Benevolent sexism is moderated by candidates’ symbolically gendered leadership styles: those high in benevolent sexism oppose candidates with feminine styles and favor candidates with masculine styles, regardless of whether the candidate is male or female. I conclude with discussion of the implications of the two faces of sexism for the role of gender and power in American elections.

Political scientists recognize discriminatory attitudes as key to understanding a range of political preferences. Sexism is associated with both explicitly and non-explicitly gendered attitudes. But why do certain individuals display discriminatory attitudes, while others do not? Drawing from psychology, we examine the potential power of an underexplored set of personality traits—secure versus fragile self-esteem—in explaining gendered attitudes and preferences. With an online sample of (N = 487) U.S.-based participants, we find that fragile self-esteem is an important trait underlying individuals’ attitudes: individuals who display a discordant view of self—explicitly positive but implicitly negative—are more likely to hold hostile sexist attitudes and prefer men in leadership; these individuals are also more likely to support the Republican Party and former U.S. president Donald Trump. While present in only a fraction of the population, our results suggest that this trait may be important for understanding the development of discriminatory attitudes toward out-groups.

This study investigates the subjective effects of gender quotas by examining how quotas affect party elites’ perceptions of quota beneficiaries. Furthermore, it proposes to distinguish between objective and subjective quota effects. Subjective effects were studied by randomizing information on whether politicians got into office through a gender quota. Elites then were asked to rate politicians based on an audio clip and an experimental vignette. Whereas the two treatment groups were told that gender quotas or ceiling quotas for men were employed during a politician’s election, the control group did not receive this information. This experiment was conducted in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. More than 1,000 party elites participated overall. Contrary to expectations, being framed as a “quota woman” only has a negative impact among elites of the radical right. In contrast with the center right, the radical right is opposed not only to quotas but to quota beneficiaries as well.

Election to office is shaped by a series of decisions made by prospective candidates, parties, and voters. These choices determine who emerges and is ultimately selected to run, and each decision point either expands or limits the possibilities for more diverse representation. Studies of women candidates have established an important theoretical and empirical basis for understanding legislative recruitment. This study asks how these patterns differ when race and intersectionality are integrated into the analyses. Focusing on more than 800 political aspirants in Canada, I show that although white and racialized women aspire to political office at roughly the same rates, their experiences diverge at the point of party selection. White men remain the preferred candidates, and parties’ efforts to diversify politics have mostly benefited white women. I argue that a greater emphasis on the electoral trajectories of racialized women and men is needed.

The research objective of this article is to analyze the European Parliament’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic from the perspective of feminist governance. Feminist governance can either play a role in ensuring the inclusion of a gender perspective in crisis responses, or, quite the opposite, crises may weaken or sideline feminist governance. The empirical analysis focuses on two aspects of feminist governance: (1) a dedicated gender equality body and (2) gender mainstreaming. In addition to assessing the effectiveness of feminist governance, the analysis sheds light on the political struggles behind the policy positions. The article argues that feminist governance in the European Parliament was successful in inserting a gender perspective into the COVID-19 response. The article pinpoints the effects of the achievements of the European Parliament’s Women’s Rights and Gender Equality Committee and gender mainstreaming on gendering the pandemic crisis response.

Although women's representation in Haiti is generally very low, the number of women judges has increased since the demise of authoritarianism and violent conflict in the 1990s. This case study explores why. I find that “gender-neutral” judicial reforms aimed at strengthening the judiciary have done more for women's judicial representation than explicitly gender-targeted policies, which still lack implementation. Donor-supported reforms have introduced more merit-based and transparent appointment procedures for magistrates (judges and public prosecutors) based on competitive examinations. This has helped women circumvent the largely male power networks that previously excluded them from the judiciary. The judiciary remains understudied in the scholarship on women's access to decision-making in fragile and conflict-affected societies; this article contributes to this emerging literature.

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states have increased their promotion of women in public life. The expansion of women's rights in these states functions as a central policy tool to stimulate modernization processes. This article investigates how the Gulf governments steer women's empowerment through the press. Regulated by the state, media outlets in GCC countries primarily serve to affirm and amplify the legitimacy of the government. Focusing on 15 English-language newspapers from 2008 to 2017, this article analyzes the degree to which women's empowerment in various arenas of society was addressed and the valence with which it was reported. Moreover, it analyzes whether foreign and domestic news were addressed differently. The article finds that once nondemocracies focus on women's rights, positive media portrayals, especially of domestic news, become central for legitimizing both women's empowerment and the regime. The article contributes to the growing literature on women's rights legislation and the state-media nexus in autocracies.

More women are running for and serving in the U.S. House of Representatives than ever before, but how does gender influence the careers of House members once they arrive in Congress? We find that gender matters in two important ways: first, freshmen women are older than freshmen men. Second, women are both more likely to lose a reelection race and more likely to retire because of electoral concerns than men. The result is that women have significantly shorter careers in the House than men. Both factors—women's delayed entry and early exit—produce fewer women in the House at any given time than if these disparities did not exist. These findings have significant consequences for the House's demographic makeup, ideological makeup, and policy agenda. The broader implication of our findings is that more women in the electoral arena is a necessary but not sufficient condition to make the representation of women truly equal.

Historically, access to contraception has been supported in a bipartisan way, best exemplified by consistent congressional funding of Title X—the only federal program specifically focused on providing affordable reproductive health care to American residents. However, in an era of partisan polarization, Title X has become a political and symbolic pawn, in part because of its connection to family planning organizations like Planned Parenthood. The conflicts around Title X highlight the effects of intertwining abortion politics and contraception policy, particularly as they relate to reproductive justice and gendered policy making. Family planning organizations like Planned Parenthood have responded to these battles by bowing out of the Title X network. To what extent have contraception deserts—places characterized by inequitable access to Title X—developed or expanded in response to policy changes related to contraception and reproductive health? What is the demographic makeup of these spaces of inequality? We leverage data from the Office of Population Affairs and the U.S. Census Bureau and use the integrated two-step floating catchment area method to illustrate the effects of a major change in the Title X network in 10 states. Our results reveal the widespread human ramifications of increasing constraints on family planning organizations as a result of quiet but insidious federal bureaucratic rule changes.