Abstract
In the last few centuries, women in Western countries have achieved revolutionary advancements in terms of civil and social rights. Nevertheless, women continue to be underrepresented in leadership positions, and this major issue needs to be tackled. In the present research, comprising two studies, we aimed to test the role of gender stereotype salience in affecting the extent to which individuals view women and men as being close to the ‘politically involved individual’ prototype and its influence on the intention to vote for women and men. In both studies, we found that the increased perceived likelihood of a target to participate in politics when described as a real man (Study 1) or as stereotypically masculine (irrespective of his/her sex, Study 2), in respect to the other conditions, mediated participants’ willingness to vote for them in case of candidacy.
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Notes
This percentage falls in the range (14–46%) of participants failing to pay sufficient attention to the instructions outlined by Oppenheimer et al. (2009), who analysed a set of social psychological studies. These authors suggest eliminating these participants in order to avoid an excessive decrease of the signal-to-noise ratio of the data set.
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Acknowledgement
We wish to express our gratitude to Francesco Di Roma for collecting the data of Study 1.
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Nicoletta Cavazza declares that he/she has no conflict of interest. Maria Giuseppina Pacilli declares that he/she has no conflict of interest.
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Cavazza, N., Pacilli, M.G. Is Politics Still a Masculine Thing? Stereotypical Male Description Activates the Prototype of the Politically Committed Individual Worthy of a Vote. Sexuality & Culture 25, 1076–1095 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-020-09810-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-020-09810-9