16:50 - 18:30
P5
Room: Terrace 2A
Panel Session 5
Matt Golder, Sona Golder - Evaluating Claims of Intersectionality
Stefanie Reher - Framing Disability: Voter Evaluations of Candidate Self-Presentations in Election Campaigns
Malu Gatto - The Presidenta Effect: Perceptions of Women in Politics in Post-impeachment Brazil
Roman-Gabriel Olar - Voting for democracy? A conjoint experiment on the effect of candidates’ autocratic past on voter preferences
The Presidenta Effect: Perceptions of Women in Politics in Post-impeachment Brazil
P5-03
Presented by: Malu Gatto
Malu Gatto 1, Anna Petherick 2
1 University College London (UCL)
2 University of Oxford
Not long ago, scholars frequently pointed to the elections of female presidents in Latin America as a sign that traditional biases against women in politics were eroding in the region. In the period since, various events have suggested that the demonstration effects of these presidents may have not been entirely positive. If true, Latin America’s first presidentas may have had the opposite effect on symbolic representation to the one anticipated. Yet this remains unknown. Rousseff’s impeachment in August 2016 provides an ideal scenario with which to explore this. Employing an original national survey experiment (N=1,498), we find that recollecting Rousseff’s presidency and impeachment reduces women voters’ positive implicit evaluations of women politicians—but seems to confirm the tendency of men voters who implicitly view women as unequipped to occupy political office.