Document Type
Article
Publication Date
12-1-2024
Publication Title
Politics and Gender
Volume
20
Issue
4
Pages
814-833
Publisher Name
Cambridge University Press
Abstract
Does gender influence how candidates in the United States present their prior political experience to voters? Messaging one's experience might demonstrate a history of power-seeking behavior, a gender role violation for women under traditional norms. As a result, men should be more likely to make experience-based appeals than women candidates. For evidence, we analyze the contents of 1,030 televised advertisements from 2018 state legislative candidates from the Wesleyan Media Project. We find that ads sponsored by experienced men are significantly more likely to highlight experience than ads sponsored by experienced women. However, we find that women's and men's ads are roughly equally likely to discuss work experience, suggesting that men's greater emphasis on experience is limited to prior officeholding. The results contribute to our understanding of gender dynamics in political campaigns, the information available to voters, and how advertising shapes the criteria voters use to assess candidates.
Recommended Citation
Hansen, Eric R. and Mautner, Connor. Job Talk: Candidate Gender and Presentation of Prior Experience in Television Ads in the US. Politics and Gender, 20, 4: 814-833, 2024. Retrieved from Loyola eCommons, Political Science: Faculty Publications and Other Works, http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1743923X24000370
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Women, Gender, and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association
