How does exposure to prominent female politicians affect the political efficacy and political interest of young women, and how can women politicians talk about their own careers in terms that increases young women’s involvement in politics? Women politicians often walk a fine line when speaking about their careers in politics, weighting an emphasis on individual resilience and how they overcame male adversity with talking about their involvements as a collective experience, where they could rely on the support of other women.

We recruited 600 women between the ages of 18 and 30 to participate in a panel study and used random assignment to invite 2/3 of them to attend one of two webinars with an internationally renowned former female head of government. The remaining participants were assigned to control. We test if attending the webinar, instrumented by winning a spot, positively affects political efficacy, political interest and the likelihood of taking political action, both in general and in relation to women’s causes. We also test if the frame, individual resilience or collective action, matters.

We find that attending either webinar increased political efficacy and women’s potential involvement in politics, but did not affect potential engagement in marches that relate to women’s issues. Although the manipulation check clearly shows that women perceived the differences in the content of the webinars and were better able to identify with the politician in the collective action condition, we cannot reject that the two frames are approximately equally effective at increasing women’s political involvement.