Study: Republican Men See Women Political Leaders As Less Competent & With Lower Integrity
/
Study: Republican Men See Women Political Leaders As Less Competent & With Lower Integrity
NPR reports on a new study analyzing data about Americans' attitudes toward their House of Representatives members from 2010 through 2014. Ideally, the analysis would be more current, because the presidential election both confirmed and negated some of these conclusions.
Mia Costa and Brian Schaffner, political scientists from the U of Mass, Amherst concluded that women tend to think "more highly of female legislators on a variety of measures", regardless of party. Republican men express serious reservations about the women representing them, whereas Democratic men often rate women higher than men in governing.
The research isn't broken down by education, and I would argue here that high-school educated women tend to be more traditional in their beliefs that men should govern. These attitudes have been explored in depth post presidential election, like PRRI/Atlantic analysis and direct interviews with a large sampling of Trump voters.
In studying members of the House, and not the Senate, the research results are also impacted by districts that are seriously gerrymandered and representing rigid attitudes among both parties, and also racial attitudes. Within these caveats, Costa and Schaffner concluded:
"While Democratic men evaluate women legislators more favorably, the opposite is true for Republican men," the researchers write. "Republican men are the one group who provide lower evaluations of female elected officials."
