Political Gender Stereotypes in a List-PR System with a High Share of Women MPs: Competent Men versus Leftist Women?

Introduction

The starting point of many studies on gender and politics has been that women are underrepresented in politics. It is the purpose of this article to explore the role of political gender stereotypes as a source of voter bias. Gender stereotypes are inherently present in our society, and also affect the political scenery. Voters lack resources, time, or interest to become informed about all election candidates. Therefore, they rely on voting cues (McDermott 2009), such as the sex of these candidates, and unconsciously associate this with particular personality traits, capacities, and opinions (Huddy and Terkildsen 1993b), which are referred to as political gender stereotypes (Dolan 2014). Although it is logical to assume that female politicians will be perceived as similar to women in general, Schneider and Bos (2014) contradict this reasoning. They suggest that, because female politicians are different from women in general, female politicians form a new stereotypical category with its own unique stereotypical qualities. This underlines the necessity to further explore the prevalence and content of political gender stereotypes that might differ from general gender stereotypes.

The prevalence of political gender stereotypes has been extensively documented in the United States, where female representatives are rather scarce in parliament and concentrated within the Democratic Party (Center for American Women and Politics [CAWP] 2017). Generally, women were considered as competent in communal areas, such as education and health care, whereas male candidates excel in all other issue domains (Alexander and Andersen 1993; Kahn 1996; Matland 1994). Furthermore, women were perceived as more leftist than men (Dolan 2014; Huddy and Terkildsen 1993a; Koch 2002; Sapiro 1981).

However, we cannot simply extrapolate the results of these American studies to other political systems, because the United States has a distinct political culture and context. Moreover, citizens’ views on women in politics may change as they might become more familiar with female politicians entering parliament and government over time. This illustrates the necessity to conduct studies on the prevalence of political gender stereotypes in other contexts and settings. With the notable exception of Matland’s (1994) study on political gender stereotyping among Norwegian voters, the European context (and List-Proportional Representation [PR] systems, in particular) has, to our knowledge, not been investigated in these matters. ¹ We focus in this article on Flanders (the largest region of Belgium), which uses a highly proportional List-PR system. It is commonly found that List-PR systems are more likely, compared with majoritarian systems, to provide a good basis for the effective implementation of electoral gender quotas (Larserud and Taphorn 2007). In Flanders, the combination of a highly proportional List-PR system and a stringent quota system (Meier 2012) results in higher shares of elected women (one of the highest in the world), a very fragmented party system (Deschouwer 2012) with female politicians relatively equally spread over the different parties, and less focus on individual candidates. These consequences of using a List-PR system provide a political context that is more woman-friendly compared with majoritarian systems (Krook and Schwindt-Bayer 2013), which possibly decreases the prevalence of stereotyping patterns. This follows from the exposure theory (Jennings 2006) that states that people who are more confronted with gender-equal information (such as the presence of women in top political positions) tend to be more open to political roles for women.

Therefore, Flanders could be viewed as a most-likely case for displaying gender-neutral attitudes, reducing the presence of political gender stereotypes.

Political gender stereotypes refer, on one hand, to voters’ assumptions about a candidate’s gender-linked personality traits, which drive expectations that women and men have different areas of issue competence. This issue competence stereotyping potentially has an important impact on actual vote choices, as previous research demonstrated that competence is a central criterion in voters’ assessment of election candidates (André, Pilet, and Wauters 2010; Goeminne and Swyngedouw 2007). On the other hand, male and female politicians are also stereotyped as having different ideological positions, that is, women are perceived as more leftist than men (Huddy and Terkildsen 1993b). Apart from the perceived personality traits (discussed above), there is yet another reason for the presence of this ideological position stereotyping: especially in the United States, women politicians are predominantly found in the Democratic Party, which is more leftist (in European terms) than the Republican. The perceived ideological position is supposed to be transferred from the party to the candidate by the voters.

The aim of this article is to find out whether gender stereotypes are present in the Flemish political sphere. In doing so, we focus on two central research questions: whether or not voters evaluate the issue competences (Research Question 1) and ideological positions (Research Question 2) of female and male candidates differently.

The results of our study, conducted in 2017 among 2,500 Flemish citizens, demonstrate that also in a List-PR system with a high share of women MPs (members of Parliament), certain stereotypical patterns prevail. ² Only minor differences were detected in terms of perceived issue competences, but the differences regarding the perceived ideological positions were more outspoken. Consequently, the explanatory value of women’s limited presence in rightist parliamentary parties for the existence of ideological position stereotypes is questioned. We show that even in political systems where female politicians are (almost) equally spread over different parties, they continue to be perceived as more leftist.

The paper proceeds as follows. The “Women’s Political (Under)Representation” section conceptualizes women’s political representation and elaborates on factors that prevent women from being elected. The “Voters’ Political Gender Stereotypes” section sheds light on one specific aspect of voter bias, that is, political gender stereotypes. We will dig deeper into some contextual variables that determine the extent to which political gender stereotypes are prevalent. A review of previous studies on political gender stereotypes provides a general direction for the development of our hypotheses in the “State of the Art” section. In the “Methodological Design” section, our methodological approach will be charted. This will be followed by a presentation and a thorough discussion of the research results. In the “Discussion and Conclusion” section, it will be argued that stereotypical perceptions of women’s ideological orientation might enhance biases among (rightist) voters.

Women’s Political (Under)Representation

The literature on political representation is dominated by Pitkin’s (1967) seminal work. She identifies four interconnected dimensions of representation: formal, descriptive, substantive, and symbolic representation. The descriptive dimension, which refers to the extent to which representatives in elected assemblies mirror the represented (Norris and Franklin 1997), is the most relevant for our study. Women could be considered as a special interest group with a distinct position and a shared set of problems (Sapiro 1981), and, therefore, their presence in the political arena is vital. This can be linked to Phillips’ (1995) politics of presence idea, which states that the personal features of representatives are crucial, as they may influence the contents of public policies. This suggests that the descriptive (under)representation of certain groups has powerful implications for their substantive policy impact (Norris and Franklin 1997), although recent studies have detected that also other actors, not belonging to the same social group, undertake acts of substantive representation (Celis et al. 2008; Celis and Erzeel 2015).

We rely on the four-stage model of political recruitment for explaining women’s underrepresentation (Norris and Lovenduski 1993). This model progresses from (1) the large number of citizens who are eligible to run for political office to (2) the smaller pool of citizens who aspire to run for political office to (3) the small group of citizens who are nominated to run for political office, and, ultimately, to (4) the smallest band of citizens who are elected to political office. When no discrimination is at work, the characteristics of the individuals present at each of the stages should be roughly the same. However, in reality, women often miss out in greater rates in the transition from each stage to the next.

Our focus is on the role of voters, which is to be situated in the final phase of the recruitment model. Findings on the existence of a voter bias have shown that the public is reluctant to vote for female candidates (Duverger 1955; Hills 1981). Other studies, however, have found that voters vote for male and female candidates at equal rates when controlling for other factors (Wauters, Weekers, and Maddens 2010) or may even prefer women to men (Black and Erickson 2003; Brians 2005). Taken together, this nuances the existence of a voter bias.

In the next section, we will elaborate on one specific aspect underlying a potential voter bias, that is, (political) gender stereotypes. These are important as they have the potential to shape people’s desire for a greater or lesser role for women in elective office (Dolan 2010).

Voters’ Political Gender Stereotypes

Stereotyping is the process by which people, through either direct experience or other exposure, develop beliefs about group characteristics, which are transferred to all members of that group (Dolan 2014). Applied to gender characteristics, gender stereotypes can be defined as “consensual beliefs about the attributes of women and men” (Eagly and Karau 2002, 574). This is related to gender roles, which include both descriptive and prescriptive norms about what members of a group do and ideally would do. Consequently, gender stereotypes inherently follow from observations of people in sex-typical roles.

On a general level, a typical woman is stereotyped as warm, gentle, kind, passive, loyal, communal, concerned with the well-being and welfare of others, compassionate, and moral, whereas a typical man is viewed as tough, aggressive, assertive, ambitious, analytical, competitive, controlling, decisive, independent, individualistic, rational, and a stronger leader (Alexander and Andersen 1993; Huddy and Capelos 2002). Eagly (1987) summarized this in terms of two dimensions, the communal and the agentic. Women are believed to have more attributes of the communal dimension, which describes a concern with the welfare of other people, and men are supposed to have more attributes of the agentic dimension, which refers to an assertive and controlling tendency. Some studies suggest that the trait stereotypes of women in general may not apply to female politicians (Schneider and Bos 2014), because voters seem to be ambivalent toward female politicians and have ill-defined ideas about what it means to be a female politician. We will therefore dig deeper into how general stereotypes are reflected in the political arena and how this influences voters’ perceptions of male and female candidates, enhancing the existence of a voter bias.

In the political sphere, voters also have various informational cues at their disposal, which include the candidate’s sex. The application of general gender-related stereotypes to female and male political candidates potentially influences voters’ evaluations of political candidates. Consequently, the general idea that women have communal and men agentic qualities might result in a different evaluation of political candidates according to their sex. It has been demonstrated that voters unconsciously associate candidate sex with particular capacities and opinions (Huddy and Terkildsen 1993b).

Capacities refer to issue competence stereotyping, which states that voters’ assumptions about a candidate’s gender-linked personality traits drive expectations that women and men have different areas of issue competence. The assessment of a candidate’s competence is an important criterion in the development of voting preferences in List-PR systems (André, Pilet, and Wauters 2010). Research by Goeminne and Swyngendouw (2007) demonstrates that Belgian voters consider competence as the central criterion for assessing election candidates.

Gender stereotypes of politicians also include a political component. Huddy and Terkildsen (1993b) named this the belief approach and state that female candidates are generally perceived as more liberal (in European terms: leftist) than male candidates of the same party. We will refer to this as ideological position stereotyp(ing)/(es). This ideological position stereotyping might constitute an electoral disadvantage for female candidates, as most voters tend to prefer viewpoints and candidates in the middle of the political spectrum (Downs 1957).

This leftist perception relates to general gender stereotypes and the kind of characteristic traits that are commonly ascribed to women, such as caring and compassion. In addition, they are seen as more competent to handle domestic and social welfare issues, but less adept at dealing with economic and defense issues (Huddy and Terkildsen 1993b).

There is yet another reason for these ideological position stereotypes: women are more commonly found among left-wing parties, especially in majority systems where the Democratic and liberal parties count significantly more women candidates and parliamentarians (CAWP 2017). This is not neutral as voters also hold stereotypes about political parties: for example, Democrats are more often associated with social welfare issues (Rahn 1993). These issue associations have an influence on the types of traits attributed to the party. In the case of the Democratic Party, the issues connect with communal traits. Therefore, an alignment between feminine stereotypes and Democrat stereotypes can be observed (Winter 2010). This interconnectedness creates a link between women and the party in a voter’s mind, and constitutes as such an additional rationale for the fact that women politicians are perceived as more leftist.

The influence of political gender stereotypes should, however, be considered alongside more central political and contextual variables to gain a fuller understanding of how voters evaluate and choose women candidates. The political context can alter the influence of gender stereotypes on candidate evaluations (Holman, Merolla, and Zechmeister 2016) but also the existence of these stereotypes. It is therefore necessary to extend the research on political gender stereotypes to other contexts (as argued above). An important contextual variable is the type of electoral system. This has an indirect effect on the prevalence of stereotyping processes. Some direct consequences of List-PR systems, such as higher shares of elected women and a very fragmented party system, are important in this respect (Krook and Schwindt-Bayer 2013). The exposure theory (Jennings 2006) predicts that voters who are more confronted with women in (top) political functions (as is generally the case in List-PR systems compared with majoritarian systems) will adopt more gender-neutral attitudes about the role of women in politics.

Taylor-Robinson, Yarkoney-Sorek, and Geva (2016) demonstrated empirically that the context is indeed an important variable mediating political gender stereotypes: in Costa Rica (which has extensive experience with women in government), voters clearly display more general, neutral attitudes than in Israel (with a limited experience of women in parliament and government). Therefore, it is our aim to explore to what extent voters hold political gender stereotypes (on both issue competence and ideological position) in the context of a List-PR system—Flanders (Belgium).

State of the Art

The existence of political gender stereotypes has been extensively documented in the United States (Alexander and Andersen 1993; Dolan 2014; Huddy and Terkildsen 1993a; Koch 2002; Rosenwasser et al. 1987; Sapiro 1981). Although gender stereotypes are not homogeneous packages and might differ across segments of the population ³ and over time, previous research points to certain stereotypical patterns. Female candidates are more likely to be perceived as competent in communal issues linked to the traditional domain of the family, such as education, health care, and helping the poor, whereas men would do a better job with agentic issues, such as military spending, foreign trade, agriculture, and taxes. Some studies also found considerable evidence for the existence of gender-belief stereotypes.

More recently, the results from Lawless’ (2004) study have revealed that citizens prefer masculine traits and characteristics in their leaders and believe that men are more likely to possess these qualities. Dolan’s (2014) results also confirmed the presence of gender stereotyped thinking: women are seen as better able to handle education and health care and men as more competent in handling terrorism.

Two shortcomings in current research on political gender stereotypes can be identified.

First, few experimental studies evaluating women candidates have been conducted outside the United States. Matland (1994) found a substantial projection of gender stereotypes onto candidates with differences in perceived policy competences in Norway, despite its reputation for a progressive political culture. Herrick and Sapieva (1998) demonstrated that male candidates are perceived as more competent on a number of policy areas in Kazakhstan. Recently, Taylor-Robinson, Yarkoney-Sorek, and Geva (2016) have found that candidate sex affects the perception of candidate abilities in Costa Rica, but in favor of women. In Israel, on the contrary, a significant gender stereotyping effect, in which female candidates are evaluated lower than male candidates, has been revealed. These results highlight the importance of the political context: the important issues of the day and the history of women in government affect whether participants favorably evaluate female candidates.

Second, although the existence of issue competence stereotyping has been demonstrated, the idea that stereotypes automatically motivate voter perceptions is questioned. Ditonto et al. (2014) state that gender stereotypes have only an indirect effect and lead voters to seek out different kinds and amounts of information about women candidates. Voters search more for information related to competence and qualifications and to compassion issues for female candidates. Bauer (2015) argues that stereotype reliance is not automatic, but depends on the type of information voters receive about a candidate in campaigns or on situational cues. Holman, Merolla, and Zechmeister (2016) suggest that the political context may alter the influence of stereotypes on candidate evaluations. The latter actually reinforces our claim that we cannot simply transfer previous, mostly U.S.-based, findings to other contexts. As context appears to matter a lot, we searched for a context that is quite different from the American and decided to focus on Flanders (Belgium). We restrict ourselves in this article to mapping the political gender stereotypes (leaving aside the effects on voting behavior).

Flanders is an interesting case, as it differs from the American (political) context in some important respects. First, the number of female representatives is higher in Belgium/Flanders (38%) compared with the United States (19%) (Inter-Parliamentary Union [IPU] 2017). This can be linked to differences in electoral formulas: List-PR systems, such as in Belgium, have significantly more women in office than majoritarian systems (Matland 2005; Norris 2004) because of higher district magnitudes, higher turnover rates, and more opportunities to present a mixed group of candidates (Krook and Schwindt-Bayer 2013). This is reinforced by the existence of electoral gender quotas, which are absent in the American system. Tremblay (2012), however, questions the automatic association between PR systems and a substantial presence of women, because voting systems do not act independently of contextual factors. This points us to the fact that not merely the electoral system but also the share of elected women is highly relevant when considering the context in which political gender stereotypes can occur.

This leads to a second argument related to exposure theory (Jennings 2006): because Belgian voters are more acquainted with female politicians in high political positions, we expect them to be more open to women. Belgian voters tend to agree strongly with the statement that political responsibilities should be equally shared between men and women (Erzeel and Caluwaerts 2015). The traditional differentiation in gender roles, which forms the base of gender stereotypes, is thus less present in Belgium.

Third, women are more equally spread over different parties in Flanders (Rosadoc 2014), making the link between leftist parties and women less obvious. This difference is especially relevant for our purposes, because it is often claimed that female politicians are perceived as more leftist because of the interconnectedness of partisan and gender stereotypes (Bauer 2017; Winter 2010).

Finally, in Belgium’s political system, there is less focus on individual leadership and personal characteristics. Belgium is as a more party-centered system, it has even been described as a “partitocracy” (Deschouwer 2012). In the United States, personal traits of candidates are more important, which often leads to gendered political races. Also the influence of (individual) campaign expenses and fund-raising on the personal result of candidates is smaller in Belgium compared with the United States (Maddens et al. 2006).

Our aim is to find out whether gender stereotypes are present in the Flemish political sphere. Our expectation is that general gender stereotypes will be reflected in politics in two ways: perceptions that female and male politicians have different issue competences and hold different ideological positions.

We are not only interested in the presence of these political gender stereotypes but also in their contents and the direction of the perceived differences between male and female candidates. Regarding the different areas of issue expertise, we expect that women, because they are typically seen as communal and social, will be stereotyped as having more competence in communal issues. Conversely, we expect that women will be perceived as being less competent in agentic issues. For neutral issues, we do not expect differences. This leads us to the following hypotheses:

Another component of political gender stereotypes is the different perception of the social attitudes and political beliefs of women (Diekman, Eagly, and Kulesa 2002). Although women are more equally spread over the different parties in Flanders, we believe that also female candidates will be perceived as being more leftist, as they are also seen as possessing communal traits, as more competent to handle communal issues and to write more legislation on women’s issues (Thomas and Welch 1991).

By investigating whether political gender stereotypes are also prevalent in Flanders, this study adds new insights to the limited knowledge on the prevalence of political gender stereotypes outside the United States and on the importance of the context in the development of gender attitudes. Our results will give a better insight in the prevalence of political gender stereotypes in List-PR systems, and therefore appeal to a broad audience.

Methodological Design

Our study is restricted to one monolingual region of Belgium, because it is crucial that the context in which the research takes places should be as constant as possible. Although Wallonia, the other main region of Belgium, uses the same electoral rules as Flanders, there are some remarkable differences regarding the electoral setting, such as smaller districts, and a political culture that is less open to women, justifying a separate analysis.

We set up a quasi-experimental research design in which hypothetical candidates were presented to respondents in text messages in which only their sex, their position on the list, and their policy position on a particular issue were mentioned. We did not mention the party affiliation of the presented candidates, and the policy statements all took a centrist position, so as not to influence the assessment of the ideological position of the presented candidates.

Our study used a 2 × 3 × 6 mixed complete block design. The candidate’s sex (male vs. female) and the list position (head of list, position in the middle, or no list position mentioned) were manipulated as between-group factors. Six different policy issues were manipulated as within-group factors. We included two topics that are generally perceived as being communal (health care and education), two agentic topics (defense and finance), and two gender-neutral topics (tourism and climate). This categorization is based on an extensive review of sixteen international studies on the assignment of policy issues to men and women by three key actors, that is, (mass) media, voters, and party elites (see online supplemental materials: Table 1). ⁴ We also checked whether these findings hold in our Flemish context by exploring literature on portfolio allocations and by looking at the appointment of male and female ministers to these issue domains.

Respondents were randomly assigned to six different treatments. After each text message, respondents were asked to complete a questionnaire about the presented candidate and message, before continuing to the next profile. The order of the issue domains was randomized to control for order effects. There was also a random variation of male and female candidates, and of head-of-list and middle-of-list candidates. The hypothetical candidates were presented as “candidate X.” In Dutch, it is possible to indicate the different sex of these candidates (“kandidaat” for the male candidate and “kandidate” for the female candidate). Likewise gender-linked pronouns were used in the instructional paragraphs and questions. In all other respects, speeches and questionnaires were identical, so as not to provide any cues to the salience of gender.

The presented stimuli included several elements: a text message, an image of the ballot (where we indicated the list position of the candidate), and a facial silhouette of the hypothetical candidate. The inclusion of facial silhouettes is innovative and is a subtle cue to respondents about the sex of the candidate. Previous studies mostly indicated the sex of the presented candidate by presenting him or her with a clear male/female name (e.g., Dolan 2014; Huddy and Terkildsen 1993a; Matland 1994; Rosenwasser et al. 1987) or by including images (see, for example, Aalberg and Jenssen 2007; Lammers, Gordijn, and Otten 2009). However, physical appearance also impacts the perception of the presented candidates (Lammers, Gordijn, and Otten 2009). Furthermore, also names can evoke certain prejudices because they possibly remind respondents of someone with the same name or because they simply (dis)like the name. The text messages were made as centrist as possible, and were based on a mix of the party programs of the four Flemish Center parties (CD&V, Open VLD, N-VA, and sp.a), the Flemish government agreement, and Flemish parties’ press statements. An example of the presented profiles and a translation of the six different text messages can be found in the online supplemental materials.

Manipulation checks were included to verify whether respondents were able to correctly answer questions about the candidate and the content of the message. All respondents had to answer a question about the sex of the presented candidate after the first treatment. Respondents who were not able to correctly answer this question could not further complete the questionnaire, and their answers were not taken into account for the data analysis. ⁵ We also included other manipulation checks, so as not to overaccentuate the importance of the candidate’s sex. Furthermore, respondents were incentivized to read the text messages thoroughly by highlighting that a prize (iPad Air 2 128 GB) would be raffled among those who could answer all the substantive questions correctly.

The most important advantage of an experimental approach is the possibility to control for a number of intervening factors. Several measures were taken to ensure that only our key variable (i.e., the sex of the candidate) plays a role in the evaluation made by the respondents. First, the institutional context was held constant by focusing on Flanders. Second, the characteristics of respondents were controlled by randomly assigning them to one of the different treatments and by making comparisons between experimental groups. Third, by using hypothetical candidates without partisan affiliation, we did not intervene in actual discussion nor was there any effect of preexisting preferences or personal (dis)tastes. Taken together, all these measures offer a methodologically rigid test.

The experiment was conducted in March to April 2017. Respondents were drawn from iVOX’s Internet-based access panel, which is the largest online panel in Flanders, with about 150,000 potential respondents. An invitation to participate was sent to 21,526 respondents. A total of 11,837 of them actually received and read ⁶ the invitation, and 4,052 agreed to participate. After discarding respondents who could not correctly answer the question about the sex of the first presented candidate (see above), we retained 2,500 participants. From this sample, we additionally excluded two categories of respondents. First, respondents who completed the survey too fast, and consequently gave random answers, were excluded. These so-called “speeder respondents” were defined as those who completed the survey in less than half of the average completion time. ⁷ Second, a question about the possible purpose of this study was included at the end of the survey. Twenty-seven respondents provided an answer that was in line with the purpose of our research. We decided to exclude the answers of those respondents as there might be a social desirability bias in these answers. However, because we also asked them to indicate at what point they found this out (while completing the questions for the first, second, . . . , sixth candidate), we did not have to exclude all of their answers. The exact number of registered answers varies therefore by policy issue. After excluding these two types of respondents, we maintained a sample of 2,362 respondents (which is a response rate of 19.95%). A description of the basic characteristics of the respondents can be found in the online supplemental materials (see Table 2).

The external validity of our experiment is enhanced by conducting the study among a sample of the population, whereas most other studies analyze university students. This increases the generalizability of our results. Students are a more homogeneous population than the general population (Chang and Hitchon 2004) and are more likely to have been exposed to women in (prominent) positions in government and parliament. They therefore might be more liberal in their attitudes toward female candidates (Kahn 1994), which could negatively impact the generalizability of findings.

There are some concerns about online opt-in panels (i.e., the kind of panel we used here), such as the widely held idea that these samples are not representative for the population in sociodemographic terms and in attitudes (as only people who once volunteered are part of the panel) and the fear that people will quickly fill in the questionnaire only to obtain an incentive (Zhang and Conrad 2016). Although it is indeed difficult to determine how well online panel members represent the general population (De Leeuw and Hox 2008), the fundamental advantages over smaller convenience samples (e.g., student samples) cannot be overlooked (Iyengar 2011). Moreover, it has been demonstrated that compared with other survey methods (such as telephone surveys), the results of well-executed opt-in panels are equally accurate (Ansolabehere and Schaffner 2014). In addition, we also set quotas to maximize the representativeness of our respondents: a hard quota for the sex of the respondents and soft quotas for their age and level of education. In addition, our sample was weighted for sex and age (weighting factors ranging from 0.76 to 1.47). And, finally, we already explained above how we dealt with people only participating to obtain a benefit (manipulation checks and elimination of “speeders”).

Results

This section is divided into two parts. In the first part, we will elaborate on the perceived competence of male and female politicians for handling particular policy domains, referring to issue competence stereotyping (H1a, H1b, and H1c). In the second part, the focus will be on the perceived ideological position of the hypothetical male and female candidates, referring to ideological position stereotyping (H2).

We are particularly interested in the general differences between male and female candidates for our analyses. The effect of list position will not be included in this analysis. We therefore recoded the candidate variable, consisting of six categories, for each policy domain into a variable with only two categories: male candidate versus female candidate. We calculated a weighting factor for each group per policy issue (ranging from 0.97 to 1.03) to exclude possible effects from the candidate’s list position, as well as effects related to the respondent’s sex (gender solidarity effects). This means that there is an equal share of male and female respondents, and of respondents confronted with different list positions of candidates in each group.

Perception of Issue Competence

For each policy issue, respondents were asked to indicate how competent the presented candidate would be in managing the issue at stake. Responses were on a (fully labeled) 7-point scale ranging from 1 (very incompetent) to 7 (very competent). The mean scores for the presented male and female candidates’ competence for each policy issue are presented in Figure 1. Statistically significant differences are indicated by means of asterisks next to the policy issues. The p values displayed are based on one-tailed tests, ⁸ as all our hypotheses include one specific direction of an effect. More detailed results can be found in the online supplemental materials (see Table 3).

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Figure 1.

Mean scores indicating the perceived competence of the presented male and female candidates for each policy issue on a scale from 1 (very incompetent) to 7 (very competent).

The results demonstrate that there are only minor differences in the perceived competences of the presented male and female candidates, and therefore these results contradict our expectations. For the interpretation of these results, we divide the policy issues into three categories: agentic, communal, and neutral issues. Regarding the agentic issues (defense and finance), the competence of the male candidates is valued higher (respectively, 4.89 and 5.10 compared with 4.81 and 5.05). This seems to be a confirmation of our first hypothesis (H1a). However, only for defense, these differences are also statistically significant (p = .044).

When it comes to the neutral policy issues (tourism and climate), we were, as expected, unable to discover statistically significant differences. In one case (tourism), the female candidate is perceived somewhat more competently; in the other case (climate), the male candidate is considered slightly more competent. These differences are minimal and not statistically significant. In this sense, these results are in line with our expectation that voters are not making large distinctions in neutral policy issues (H1b).

When we look at the communal issues (education and health care), we see a different picture. The female candidate’s perceived competence in handling education is estimated higher than that of the male candidate (5.03 compared with 4.96). This seems to confirm our expectation, although the difference is not statistically significant (p = .055). For health care, however, we see an opposite trend: the perceived competence is somewhat higher for the male candidate than for the female candidate (4.93 compared with 4.91). But here again, the difference is very minimal and not statistically significant (p = .699). H1c should therefore be rejected.

In sum, there seems to be little differences between men and women regarding perceived competence. This finding also holds when we only take the responses of male respondents into consideration (not shown in Figure 1). Gender solidarity theory posits that men are less likely to value female traits and are more in favor of male leaderships. The male respondents in our sample, however, do not seem to differentiate in their perceptions of female and male candidates’ issue competences.

Perception of Ideological Positions

A second component of political gender stereotypes is the different perception of the ideological positions of women. Respondents were asked to position the presented candidates on a left–right scale, ⁹ ranging from 1 (very leftist) to 7 (very rightist). The mean score for the ideological position of the presented male and female candidates in each policy issue are presented in Figure 2. More detailed results can be found in the online supplemental materials (see Table 4).

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Figure 2.

Mean scores indicating the perceived ideological position of the presented male and female candidates in each policy issue on a scale from 1 (very left) to 7 (very right).

The results must be interpreted in the following way: the lower the score, the more leftist the candidate is perceived. The results indicate that the presented female candidates are perceived as being more to the left than their male counterparts. ¹⁰ Given the large numbers of cases and the use of a one-tailed test, it might be “easy” to find statistical significance. However, it is important to note that the differences regarding perceived ideological positioning are clearly more pronounced than those for perceived issue competence and hold for all but one policy issue. In all cases, except tourism, these differences are also statistically significant, indicating that female candidates are systematically perceived to be more to the left. This is a clear confirmation of our second hypothesis (H2).

However, one result is at odds with our expectations: for health care, the presented male candidate obtained a lower score than the female candidate (3.53 compared with 3.68). Moreover, this difference is statistically significant (p = .011). This puzzling result contradicts our hypothesis and is challenging to unravel. ¹¹

Discussion and Conclusion

The purpose of this article was to uncover the prevalence of political gender stereotypes in Flanders. Flanders could be seen as a woman-friendly environment, and Flemish voters have been extensively exposed to female politicians. In that sense, it could be interpreted as a least-likely case for the development of political gender stereotypes.

Political gender stereotypes were operationalized as the different perception of the issue competences and the ideological position of male and female candidates. The differences in perceived issue competence are rather small and not always unequivocal. Gender-linked traits and competences only have an impact in some policy domains, most notably defense. Previous research already indicated that defense can be considered as the most typical masculine policy domain (Holman, Merolla, and Zechmeister 2016; Lawless 2004). This finding also highlights the potential large impact of the political context: female candidates may have a difficult time when defense or security issues are at the top of the agenda. For other policy domains, the personal qualities needed to master them do not seem to simply correspond to typical male or female traits. For example, women are not considered as being more competent on typical communal issues, such as health care. In line with Jennings’ (2006) exposure theory, the increased presence of women in politics and their extended focus beyond communal issues seems to result in a less stereotyped view on women’s competences.

When it comes to ideological positions, women are perceived as more leftist (Huddy and Terkildsen 1993a). This is clearly confirmed by our results: when politicians proclaim a centrist political position (as is the case in our study), female politicians are for all policy domains (except for health) perceived as being more to the left than men. ¹² This finding has important repercussions for the literature on political gender stereotypes, as it questions the prevalence of women MPs in leftist parties as explanation for the different evaluations of ideological beliefs of women and men. Several prominent women politicians in Flanders (ministers and party leaders) belong to (center-)right parties, and also in the neighboring countries, prominent politicians belong to center-right (Merkel, May) or even far-right parties (Le Pen, Petry). Previous research indicated that issues associated with rightist parties clearly do not align with communal issues or traits. On the contrary, they connect more to masculine stereotypes (Winter 2010). However, even in Flanders, female candidates are still perceived as being more leftist despite the fact that women MPs are spread over several parties.

Consequently, there must be other explanations for this phenomenon. We give a few suggestions. First, this might stem from the assumption that female politicians in reality support more leftist positions and policy proposals aimed at fostering equality. Second, it might arise from the idea that female voters are less supportive of rightist parties and increasingly more inclined to describe themselves as leftist (Harteveld et al. 2017). Because voters tend to identify more strongly with candidates that resemble them most, female voters transfer their ideological position to female politicians. Flemish women indeed position themselves more on the left side of the political spectrum compared with Flemish men and are more inclined to vote for socialist/leftist parties (Celis et al. 2015). Third, this might also be related to the kind of traits that are typically attributed to women. The idea is that these traits impact the perceived beliefs of women politicians rather than on their perceived capabilities. The reasoning would then be that women are equally capable of handling, for example, financial issues than men, but that women will do this in a softer manner and with the intention of enhancing equality (i.e., a more leftist approach).

In sum, and referring back to the title of this article, our results confirm the perception of leftist women, but not that of competent men (in agentic issues).

Our results have a number of implications. First, our findings contradict the idea that gender stereotypes are tightly interconnected packages (Huddy and Terkildsen 1993a, 1993b; Koch 2002; Schneider and Bos 2014): perceptions of candidates’ ideological positions seem to be standing apart from their perceived issue competences.

Second, the present study illustrates that gender still matters to the fate of women candidates. Voters may use a candidate’s gender to simplify political choices and to make inference about a candidate’s issue positions and ideological orientations. These stereotypes can exert an influence on different stages of the electoral process, for example, when female candidates decide to run (or not) or when they make choices on how to campaign. These misperceptions might be difficult to overcome as female candidates would need to adopt more conservative positions on some policy issues.

The political impact of these ideological stereotypes deserves further consideration as it may enhance a bias among voters and more specifically among (center-)rightist voters who may be reluctant to vote for “leftist” women. If Downs’ (1957) median voter theorem still holds today, this perception of “leftist” women might constitute an electoral disadvantage for these women, as most voters tend to prefer viewpoints and candidates in the middle of the political spectrum. It is in this respect important to stress that all the candidates that we presented took centrist positions in their messages. We do not know whether this also applies to female candidates in rightist parties, for whom a more leftist perception might actually be seen as an advantage.

Although voters might hold these stereotypes about candidates’ ideology, this does not necessarily mean that they will be applied to evaluations of political candidates. Bauer (2015) argues that stereotypes require activation before voters use them to evaluate female candidates. This depends on the type of information voters have about a candidate. Therefore, female candidates must be strategic in their campaign messages. Furthermore, Holman et al. (2016) state that voters may be less likely to apply stereotypes in the presence of other individuating information. Especially the interplay between gender and partisan cues is puzzling, because the latter could trump the idea of women’s leftist ideology, but this remains for future research.

Third, previous research pointed to the importance of a country’s political context for understanding the prevalence of political gender stereotypes. Our results demonstrate that, even in contexts where voters have been intensively exposed to female politicians and where female candidates are spread over the different parties, stereotyped images of women’s ideological positions remain prevalent (but not stereotypes about policy competences). It could therefore prove useful to replicate this study in other contexts and regions to further disentangle the mechanisms behind this effect. This will also help to disentangle which elements (the electoral system per se, or one or more of its consequences such as the share of elected women, party centeredness, or political culture) are crucial in setting a context that helps to overcome gendered (issue competence) stereotyping.

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