{"id":556992,"date":"2023-04-25T12:49:35","date_gmt":"2023-04-25T16:49:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/?p=556992"},"modified":"2023-05-08T08:39:04","modified_gmt":"2023-05-08T12:39:04","slug":"political-science-major-examines-bias-when-women-run-for-office-556992","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/political-science-major-examines-bias-when-women-run-for-office-556992\/","title":{"rendered":"Political science major examines bias when women run for office"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Rochester undergraduate discovers that prospective voters perceive female politicians as more extreme than their male counterparts.<\/h2>\n

Morgan Gillespie \u201923 had more than a hunch.<\/p>\n

Combing through literature on gender bias among American voters, Gillespie, a political science major at the University of Rochester<\/a>, found a curious gap. While many researchers agreed that a candidate\u2019s gender influences prospective voters\u2014the nagging question of how and in which ways had not been answered satisfactorily. Moreover, she found little scholarship that sought to measure voters\u2019 perceptions of ideological differences between men and women seeking public office.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why, with some help from her honors thesis advisor Scott Abramson<\/a>, an associate professor in the Department of Political Science<\/a>, she devised and conducted an experiment that examines the connection between a politician\u2019s gender and voters\u2019 perception of that politician\u2019s policy preferences.<\/p>\n

Gillespie\u2019s findings are preliminary. This summer, she and Abramson will widen the study and prepare a paper that they hope to publish in a top peer-reviewed journal. The data from her experiment will serve as the foundation. As her advisor\u00a0puts it, Gillespie has produced\u00a0\u201ca kick-ass honors thesis\u201d\u00a0that\u00a0will serve as\u00a0\u201ca\u00a0pilot\u00a0for a more comprehensive experiment based on a nationally representative sample.\u201d<\/p>\n

What Gillespie has found so far is striking.<\/p>\n

Her results show that voters (both male and female) use gender cues to form beliefs about which policies a politician supports. When voters are unaware of a politician\u2019s party affiliation, women politicians are seen as more liberal<\/em> than otherwise identical men. However, when party affiliations are known, female candidates are seen as more ideologically extreme<\/em> than male candidates of the same party. Furthermore, what has widely been labeled \u201cwomen’s issues,\u201d or issues that women candidates are more likely to support\u2014such as abortion, paid family leave, or the gender wage gap\u2014are perceived as more ideologically liberal<\/em> issues or extreme positions<\/em>. Gillespie found very little difference between male and female respondents in her experiment.<\/p>\n

If the findings bear out, Gillespie will have provided evidence against the conclusions of an often-cited meta-analysis<\/a> from 2020, according to which voters appear to prefer women candidates for public office.<\/p>\n

The studies on which the meta-analysis is based \u201care conflating a preference for women with beliefs about the candidate\u2019s ideology or party affiliation,\u201d Gillespie says. \u201cThe conclusions from these previous studies misinterpret the positive effect of gender.\u201d She notes carefully that her and Abramson\u2019s findings suggest an additional source of bias that these experiments\u00a0\u201cfail to uncover.\u201d<\/p>\n

Departmental program identifies promising undergraduate researchers<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Gillespie, who came to Rochester from San Diego, California, is part of the highly selective political science honors program<\/a> that enables senior undergraduates to conduct original social science research in a small, collaborative setting. Stellar students are invited into the program by the department faculty, generally in the spring of their junior year. As Abramson tells it, Gillespie was a shoo-in.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s clearly one of the best undergraduates in our department,\u201c he says, pointing to her abilities as a researcher, coupled with her strong work ethic and insightful questions. \u201cThe progress she makes week to week is more than I expect from most graduate students.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gillespie has broad intellectual interests that made her pursue minors in international relations, legal studies, and art history. She\u2019s also deeply involved in numerous campus activities, including the student government\u2019s judicial council, mock trial, the pre-law society, the Gamma Phi Beta Sorority, and the women\u2019s rugby team. As if this were not enough, she has been working at the New York State Office of the Attorney General where she works in mediation for the Consumer Frauds and Protection Bureau<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Measuring for gender bias<\/strong><\/h3>\n

In order to quantify bias based on a candidate\u2019s gender,\u00a0Gillespie\u00a0created six hypothetical candidate vignettes such as the one below, into which she randomly assigned pronouns\u00a0(she or he) to provide gender cues.<\/p>\n

\n

Politician 1 was born in Dallas, Texas in 1983. He received his B.A. from Baylor University in 2005 and his J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 2014. He was worked as a professional athlete, a nonprofit executive, and a lawyer. He is married and has no kids. Assume Politician 1 was asked to vote “yea” or “nay” for each of the following bills. Please select the bills you believe he would vote “yea” for.<\/p>\n