The Effect of Protesters’ Gender on Social Movement Perception and Repression Toleration

This paper develops and tests an original theory of how protesters’ gender affects non-democratic regimes’ ability to repress social movements. The theory builds on psychology literature about gender stereotypes. Namely, research on gender stereotypes shows that, across nations, women tend to be seen as warmer, weaker, and more trustworthy while men are perceived as tougher and more aggressive. These stereotypes, I posit, lead to female protesters being perceived as less violent which, in turn, lowers the public’s likelihood to tolerate suppression of protesters. Furthermore, I posit that large female participation improves protesters’ ability to contest government narratives that falsely portray protesters as violent. Yet the role of women is more complex. In day-to-day interactions, people tend to stereotype women at the level of subtypes such as “housewives,” “businesswomen,” “feminists,” or “lesbians”, as opposed to the overarching category of “women”. The occurrence of gender subtyping, I maintain, has important implications for citizens’ perceptions of different subgroups of female protesters. Specifically, building on the literatures on moral typecasting and ambivalent sexism, I posit that the public has a different repression toleration threshold for traditional women protesters (such as protesters who emphasize their wifehood and motherhood) compared to non-traditional women protesters (such as protesters who emphasize feminism and gender equality). To test my theory, I use a pre-registered survey experiment in Russia. I present respondents with fictitious newspaper articles describing a protest where I randomly vary the gender of frontline protesters: men, generic women, traditional women, and non-traditional women. While social scientists have examined extensively the implications of gender stereotypes in the workplace and electoral politics spheres, this is the first experimental work to my knowledge that looks at the affective and behavioral reactions towards female protesters. By examining how protesters’ gender influences citizens’ repression toleration thresholds, I contribute to key debates about the determinants of successful mobilization against illiberal regimes. Similarly, my experimental design, which pits against each other protesters’ and authorities’ accounts of the protests, advances scholarly understanding of the effectiveness of civil society messaging intended to neutralize government propaganda. Finally, by discussing how different subtypes of female protesters elicit different public responses, this research adds to the growing calls for political scientists to take gender more seriously, which includes outgrowing our field’s tendency to equate gender and sex.