During the 2024 presidential campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris has been subject to sexist attacks by former President Donald Trump and others in the Republican Party – a reality that women in politics know quite well, even outside of the US. Loes Aaldering and Alessandro Nai studied voters’ reaction to sexism in the campaign, finding that politicians have nothing to gain electorally with this type of attack. Practically all voter groups, including men and Republicans – even MAGA supporters – dislike sexist attacks and punish the attacker politically for it.
With Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, currently leading in the polls, there is a fair chance that America will have its first women president on January 20th, 2025. The 2024 presidential race remains however extremely close, with both candidates trading barbs daily. Against this aggressive rhetorical background, pinpointed by some as a source of increasing political violence, an element unfortunately – if not unexpectedly – stands out: misogyny. Cornell University philosopher Kate Manne argues that misogyny is the ‘policing of the patriarchy’ and falls on women who violate patriarchal norms and expectations. And this is clearly what we see happening for Harris, and all other high-profile women in politics: constantly being at the receiving end of pushbacks for being a woman in a man’s world.
Former President Donald Trump is certainly known for his sexist and derogatory attacks on political opponents and others who displease him – he claimed, for instance, that Harris owes her career to sexual favors and that foreign leaders will see her as a “play toy“, regularly comments on her appearance, and has called her stupid, incompetent and nasty. Echoing the sentiment of his possible future boss, Trump’s running mate, Senator JD Vance, has framed Harris as a “childless cat lady” who has no direct stake in the country’s future, while other Republicans have called her a ‘DEI-hire’, implying that she did not get to where she is today because of her qualities but because of preferential policies for women (of color).
Voters’ reaction to sexist attacks
What do voters think about these kinds of sexist attacks on women politicians? Are there voters that appreciate them? And how can women politicians respond to such sexist attacks? We examined this in a series of experiments among over 7,000 American voters conducted over the spring and summer of 2024.
We asked participants to read a mock newspaper article discussing a “heated exchange” having happened between two fictional candidates during in a TV debate; a male politician was described as attacking his female opponent either via an implicitly sexist attack (“she is too sensitive and indecisive, and does not have what it takes for this job”), an explicitly sexist attack (“as a woman, she is too emotional and insecure, and lacks the leadership qualities that are necessary for this job”) or a non-sexist attack (“she is a bad politician and will do real damage to the state”). Respondents were randomly shown one of these messages and were then asked to evaluate both the (male) attacker and the (female) target of the attack, as well as how likely they were to vote for them in a hypothetical election.
“Women’s March, Washington DC” (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) by Alangreig
Sexism is not a winning strategy
Our results overwhelmingly show that sexist campaign attacks are not a winning electoral strategy. Sexist attacks were rated as more aggressive, less appropriate and more uncivil than their non-sexist counterparts. The goal of these attacks is to diminish the popularity of the female target (although there might be ulterior motives behind such attack, such as riling up and mobilizing one’s base). Yet, for almost all voter groups we found a clear “boomerang effect”: the attack harmed the popularity of the male attacker. Figure 1 shows the effect of a sexist attack (vs a non-sexist attack) on “net” candidate likeability, which constitutes the sympathy score of the male attacker minus the sympathy score of the female target (that is, positive scores indicate that the attacker gains popularity compared to his opponent, and negative scores indicate the opposite).
Figure 1 – Net effect of sexist campaign attack (vs a non-sexist attack) on sympathy score
Figure 1 shows that there are differences in how strongly voters punish a male candidate for a sexist attack, which is most pronounced among Democratic and women voters. But also among men and Republican voters and, surprisingly, even among voters who identify themselves with Trump’s MAGA movement, we see a net loss, or at least not a gain. We find similar results for the impact of sexist attacks on the propensity to vote for the candidates, and we find this for Democratic and for Republican attackers.
In short, candidates gain nothing electorally by attacking their female opponents in a sexist way; it actually costs them support among large segments of the electorate.
Responding to sexism
Research has frequently shown that candidates at the receiving end of a political attack should respond to it. But how can women politicians respond to the sexism they encounter during the campaign? And how does their response resonate with voters? Based on the prejudice confrontations literature, we tested eight different types of responses, varying from not responding at all to strong retaliations against the sexism. Figure 2 shows that there are two types of responses that voters strongly dislike. First, reacting argumentatively and in an uncivil manner – for example, with anger and name-calling. Secondly, voters also do not like responses with aggressive sarcasm – for example, retaliating against the attacker by joking about his masculinity. After these two types of responses of the female target, the backlash of the sexist attack for the male candidate is least strong. However, there is still a backlash, which means that the male attacker still drops in popularity compared to his female opponent.
Figure 2 – Net effect of sexist campaign attack on sympathy score – after response female target
Voters seem to have a slight preference for responses that are educational or ironic. An educational response might be, for example, an explanation of why this form of discrimination is harmful. An ironic response, for example, is when the female candidate makes a joke like ‘Oh, so I belong in the kitchen?’. However, the differences with not responding, a counterattack based on policy and leadership (but not engaging with the sexism), an argumentative but civil response, and a response that appeals to emotions – for instance explaining that sexism is hurtful – are very small.
And again, approval and disapproval of responses to sexism are universal among voters: we see few differences between Democratic and Republican voters or between men and women voters in their preferences for types of responses.
Thus, even though sexism in campaigns has a many-faced detrimental impact for women in politics – it activates gender stereotypes in the minds of voters and is aimed to trigger the assumed incongruity between women and leadership roles, it normalizes incivility in political discourse, it diminishes political ambition among women, it tries to silence women politicians, just to name a few – it does not seem to directly hurt them electorally. Only time will tell what role sexism has played in the 2024 election, and whether it also didn’t hurt (or has even helped) Harris’ chances in November.
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