Voter Reactions to Trajectories of Women’s Representation: Experimental Evidence on the Group Politics of Gender

This article investigates the role of gender for group politics from a demand-side perspective. It asks how male and female voters react to appeals highlighting either advances toward or stagnation in reaching gender equality. Specifically, it focuses on reactions to trajectories of women’s representation and thus connects the literature on the political effects of representation with the literature on group politics and social status. This is fruitful to assess both positive and negative reactions by voters, potentially even a backlash among men. Existing research on the effects of women's descriptive representation on citizens' attitudes has mainly investigated potential positive effects, namely so-called symbolic effects, focusing on the political engagement of women themselves or the perceived legitimacy of outcomes. However, long-term shifts in representation have rarely been theorized as potential causes of societal discontent. This is crucial for two reasons: First, the large advances made in the more equal representation of women and men since the mid-1900s entail a fundamental challenge to the male-dominated political status quo and could trigger a backlash among men. Second, though initially major, these advances have stagnated in many European countries in the last 20 years, which is a potential source of discontent among women. This article relies on a survey experiment to assess the political consequences of priming shifts in women’s representations in two distinct ways, either as a story, of strong change or of stagnation. The survey experiment (n of 3000) was fielded in Germany, exemplary of a Western European country that has seen progress towards gender equality, but also stagnation in the last two decades. The outcomes of interest were social status, political efficacy, societal discontent, and voting propensities for parties characterized by markedly progressive or authoritarian sociocultural positions, in this case the Greens and the radical right Alternative for Germany. The results show asymmetric effects between men and women. While men perceived a lower social status when primed about women's representation, there were no downstream effects on broader discontent or radical right voting propensities. Crucially, both women and men expressed concerns about boys' opportunities when exposed to a scenario of future overrepresentation of women. However, not even this scenario triggered societal discontent among men. Men did not lash back against women's representation, even if they realized that this means a slightly lower standing for themselves. Furthermore, while women were not too resentful about their currently stagnating descriptive representation, they were still mobilized to vote for the Greens as a remedy against this stagnation. These results imply, first, that gender equality is not seen as a particularistic goal by men or women. Even men, the ‘outgroup’ in this case, value women’s representation. Second, the implications for group politics are that progressive parties can appeal to and mobilize groups with upward social status trajectories. On the contrary, on an optimistic note, men, with an overall downward trajectory, cannot be easily mobilized to vote radical right based on shifting gender group relations.