Roosmarijn de Geus, PhD

How gender attitudes shaped the 2024 US Election 

Like many others I’ve found myself digesting the results of the U.S. elections over the past few days. In interactions with friends I seem to be having two parallel but diametrically opposed conversations. On the one hand there are those who try to convince me that Harris’ loss can be explained by many things (inflation, immigration, incumbency) but most definitely not sexism. The second set of conversations are characterised by frustration, anger and defeatism: why does it seem impossible for a woman candidate in the US to break through the glass ceiling? Surely Harris’ gender played a role here?

I think part of the issue here is our desire for mono-causal explanations. We’d like to think it was either X or Y that explains the result. Whereas in reality voting behaviour is complex and multifaceted, and what explains the decision of one group of voters might not be relevant for others. And yet – despite the likely importance of incumbency, inflation and ideology – I think that gender attitudes and sexism did matter – and it did so in several ways.

Straight up sexism

An inconvenient truth perhaps – but there is clear evidence that sexist attitudes are alive and well among the U.S. electorate (and the U.K. electorate too as my own research shows). This was the case in 2016, and this is very likely still the case now. For instance, data from 2022 shows that 25% of Americans agree with the statement that: ‘’women seek to gain power by getting control over men” (Schaffner), a statement that researcher use to measure so-called ‘hostile sexism’.

The relationship between sexism and candidate choice is complicated however. This is because sexism is strongly associated with partisanship. Basically, Democrats and Republicans differ strongly in their attitudes toward gender and the majority of those who hold sexist views are Republican supporters. In some ways this reduces the importance of Harris’ gender: this segment of the electorate would be unlikely to support her anyway. Time will tell if Harris underperformed amongst these voters compared to Biden.

More crucially though, the association between sexism and partisanship means that sexism has become an integral part of the ideological divide in U.S. politics and consequently has become a strong predictor of vote choice. Someone’s attitudes about gender issues (including candidate gender) help explain partisan sorting. Therefore to deny the importance of sexism as a set of values is to hollow out what it means to identify as Democrat or Republican.

Indirect sexism

Sexism doesn’t just affect party choice directly, rather it has indirect effects too. In principle people vote for candidates that share their ideological positions and viewpoints. This means that to win an election political parties need to balance pleasing their base (which tends to be more ideologically extreme)  with persuading centrist voters. This is called the median voter theorem in political science. Basically – in a first past the post style system parties who run ideologically more ‘extreme’ candidates tend to do badly (see: Jeremy Corbyn). 

It might not seem like it, but gender matters in this calculation. Research has shown that women candidates are seen as more liberal than they are – thus placing them further away from the median voter. This is likely explained by entrenched gender stereotypes that pervade society about women being more empathetic, caring and nurturing,  all qualities that are also associated with more liberal or left-leaning policies such as redistribution or progressive attitudes on cultural issues. This means that a female Democratic candidate is likely seen to be less centrist than a male counterpart – regardless of her actual policy positions – and may have more difficulty convincing swing voters. Interestingly this has made some left-leaning parties wary of selecting women candidates based on electability concerns. A factor that was discussed at length during the 2020 primary in relation to candidates such as Warren – and might have played a role in 2024 had a Democratic primary taken place.

A glass cliff after all 

A third and final way which gender shaped the 2024 outcome is through the so-called “glass cliff”. Harris’ ascension to power follows a pattern very familiar to those who study women politicians. Harris obtained the top spot in her party without an official electoral process – and she did so at a time when the Democratic Party was plummeting in the polls. Researchers have referred to this scenario as a glass cliff event. A broad range of studies has shown that women and people of colour are more likely to obtain positions of power and leadership under conditions that are unfavourable. 

There are positive and negative interpretations of the glass cliff phenomenon. On the one hand, women might be chosen at these times because they are perceived to be better crisis managers or because they are seen to represent a clear change or break from the past. On the other hand, the fact that more traditional candidates (white, male) tend to step aside at these times suggests that women and minorities are only offered opportunities for leadership when failure is either expected or inevitable – often to be personally blamed afterwards. 

Thus, although inflation, anti-incumbency sentiment and partisanship no doubt played an important part in explaining Trump’s victory, it’s important to recognize the multi-faceted ways that our attitudes and assumptions about gender continue to shape contemporary elections – both in the U.S. and elsewhere.