Women experts and gender bias in political media

Ozer, Adam L (2023) Women experts and gender bias in political media. Public Opinion Quarterly, 87 (2). 293 - 315. ISSN 0033-362X

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Abstract

Widely held gender stereotypes present obstacles for women experts, who are generally evaluated less positively than equally qualified men across a range of fields. While audiences may view women as better equipped to handle certain feminine-stereotyped issues, Role Congruency Theory suggests that expert authority in politics may be incongruent with traditional feminine gender roles, leading to a subsequent backlash. Building upon the latter theory, I hypothesize that when cued to consider the expertise of a news source, the (in)congruence of gender-stereotyped roles will activate gender biases which increase the gap in evaluations and trust of women and men. Using selection experiments, I assess the relationship between domain-relevant expertise and gender biases across a range of gender-stereotyped issues. I find that women experts are rewarded less for additional expertise and punished more severely for a lack of expertise, exacerbating gender-based biases relative to the control. I find that this pattern is consistent across both masculine- and feminine-stereotyped issues, including issues that disproportionately impact women, such as women’s health care and the gender wage gap. The addition of competing partisan cues, however, overwhelms the influence of gender. The normative implications suggest women in the media often face an uphill battle to advocate for their interests on key issues that affect them even when they may have more direct relevant experience in addition to their qualifications.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	https://academic.oup.com/poq
Additional Information:	© 2023 The Author(s).
Divisions:	Government
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Woman J Political Science
Date Deposited:	16 May 2023 11:15
Last Modified:	02 Dec 2024 18:09
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/119203

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