Studying Gender Stereotypes of Political Candidates Over Four Decades

We present a meta-analysis of 63 studies of candidate gender stereotyping over 40 years to assess both overall effect sizes and variations in effects across studies. Our analysis shows that there is a slight but consistent tendency to ascribe stereotypically feminine personality traits and issue competencies to women candidates and stereotypically masculine personality traits and policy competencies to their male counterparts. Thus, voters seem only weakly to ascribe gender stereotypes to candidates. We find no evidence of any consistent diminishing of the gender stereotyping of candidates over time. Study design does matter. Lab experiments are more likely to indicate gender stereotyping of both male and female candidates. This applies to personality traits and policy competencies alike.