Abstract: While early research into election outcomes found voters were less likely to vote for women, recent accounts suggest voters do not disproportionately punish women at the ballot box and may now harbour a slight preference for them. Given voters no longer seem to hold an outright preference for men or women, we ask: how is gender used as a heuristic in voter decision-making? We aim to discern whether voters support women simply because they are women or because they make gender-based assumptions about women’s policy platforms. To address this, we field three novel experiments with varying levels of information about politicians’ descriptive characteristics, substantive priorities, or both. Consistent with past work, we find voters prefer women to men, but that they no longer hold outright gendered preferences once shown information on politicians’ policy priorities. Our research contributes to understanding the relative importance of descriptive and substantive representation in voter decision-making.
Abstract: Surveys are a cornerstone of political research, shaping our understanding of public opinion, voting behaviour, and policy preferences. Yet, women are consistently more likely than men to respond "don't know" to survey questions. Existing work focuses primarily on political knowledge, but we know far less about the broader scope and causes of this pattern, including how gender intersects with education, age, class, and ethnicity to shape non-response. This paper provides the first comprehensive, question- and individual-level analysis of survey non-response by gender and intersecting identities, drawing on more than 100,000 respondents across 29 waves of the British Election Study Internet Panel. We examine how "don't know" responses vary by what is being asked about and how it is asked and explore potential explanations for these trends. Our findings shed new light on a longstanding methodological issue. If "don't know" responses are routinely dropped from analyses, we risk systematically excluding women's voices and misrepresenting the views of less dominant social groups. By unpacking the sources and consequences of gendered non-response, this research advanced more accurate and inclusive measures of public opinion.
A Turning Point for Women? A Systematic Review of Voter Bias against Women Candidates, w/ Hannah Bunting and Jessica C. Smith (working paper)
Abstract: For decades, the consensus in political behaviour research was that women candidates face electoral bias rooted in gender stereotypes and social role expectations. However, a growing body of evidence suggests that this dynamic may be shifting as recent studies find voters expressing equal or even greater support for women candidates. This paper presents a systematic review of research on gender bias in candidate evaluations published over the past five years, applying PRISMA guidelines to identify and analyse over 200 studies across multiple country contexts. Initial findings reveal that while the field tends to expect a negative bias against women, empirical results increasingly point to a more complex picture. Experimental designs, particularly those using hypothetical candidates, are more likely to find a positive bias towards women, whereas observational studies continue to report neutral or mixed effects. We also find theoretical fragmentation: many scholars continue to rely on traditional stereotyping and role incongruity frameworks, while others turn to intersectionality, partisan heuristics, or system justification approaches to explain shifting patterns. We argue that the field may be at a theoretical turning point—where old assumptions about gender disadvantage persist even as empirical evidence suggests changing voter preferences. The paper calls for renewed theoretical attention to conditional and context-specific gender effects, and for methodological innovation to distinguish genuine bias reversals from experimental effects.
When the Spotlight’s On: Issue Salience and Men’s Conditional Representation of Women’s Interests, w/ Louise Luxton (in progress)
Abstract: When and why do men speak up on women’s interests? While women politicians consistently champion women’s concerns, men do so selectively. In this paper, we focus on one key mechanism that prompts men’s engagement: when women’s issues become highly salient in public debate. Building on work showing that men represent women when it is electorally advantageous, we argue that issue salience creates strategic opportunity for engagement. Following high-profile events that bring issues disproportionately affecting women into the centre of public and media attention, both the informational costs of participating and the reputational rewards for speaking out are heightened. In these moments, men can signal attention to women’s concerns with maximum visibility and minimal effort. Using data on UK parliamentary debates and print news media coverage we use a semi-automated classification approach to track men and women MPs’ attention to different women’s issues during “ordinary” periods and in the aftermath of salient events. We anticipate that women MPs’ advocacy for women’s issues is consistent, while men’s is conditional on the visibility and attention paid to them on the national news agenda.