SBP: A Cross-National Experimental Study of Attitudes about Women in Government and Leadership.

本项目阐明了在美国等老牌民主国家中影响妇女进入政府的因素，在这些国家，妇女的教育和就业水平很高，但当选和任命的职位仍然少于男子。 以前的研究试图解释基于选举制度设计，经济发展和文化的国家之间妇女代表性的差异，但这些因素使许多差异无法解释。 这项研究利用精心设计的实验来收集和解释新的数据，以评估对妇女是否适合担任特定类型的政治职位和不同政策领域的看法。 研究设计还允许通过心理学的既定理论对研究结果进行评估，这些理论解释了个人对政治候选人的态度，因为现有的性别定型观念，与自己相似，或缺乏被认为是领导所必需的属性。 这项研究在八个国家进行，这些国家的选举机构、国家优先事项和妇女进入政府的情况各不相同。 这一组国家可以对许多因素进行比较，如候选人的政党和候选人性别、职位类型和政策领域、妇女先前担任关键政府职位的情况以及选民的属性，如性别、社会经济地位、政治意识形态和性别角色态度。 这项研究将提供所需的知识，以加强世界各地的民主，通过提高对历史上代表性不足的群体的政府包容的挑战的理解。技术摘要本项目进行了一项实验，收集有关妇女的能力，与男子相比，在不同级别的职位和政策领域的社会态度的可比跨国数据。 这个实验已经在哥斯达黎加和以色列进行，将在加拿大、智利、英国、瑞典、美国和乌拉圭进行复制。 这些国家都是成熟的民主国家，但在政府中妇女的参与、制度规则以及政府政策议程上社会福利与国防问题的中心地位方面各不相同。 该实验使用约500字的候选人演讲，加上简短的候选人传记作为治疗。 在这种情况下，候选人的性别以及她/他所代表的政党被作为实验性的处理方法引入。 我们使用的候选人的党派的影响作为手段来衡量性别对候选人的评价的影响程度。 在每个国家，实验参与者将被随机分配到一个治疗组。 在阅读演讲稿后，参与者完成一份问卷，要求他们评估候选人的各种职位和不同的政策领域。 调查表还载有关于参与者背景的项目，以便进行事后分析，探讨不同人口或意识形态背景的人是否对妇女和男子担任政府领导人的能力表现出不同的态度。 最后，还有一组问题，用于进行性别角色分析，也用于事后分析和跨国比较。

General SummaryThis project elucidates factors influencing inclusion of women in government in established democracies like the United States, where women have high levels of education and employment yet continue to hold fewer elected and appointed positions than men. Previous studies have sought to explain differences in representation of women among countries based on electoral institution design, economic development, and culture, but those factors leave much of the variance unexplained. This study collects and interprets new data utilizing a carefully designed experiment to assess perception of women's suitability for specific types of political posts and in different policy areas. The research design also allows findings to be assessed by established theories from psychology explaining attitudes individuals have of political candidates because of existing stereotypes of gender, similarity to oneself, or lack of attributes considered necessary to lead. The study is conducted in eight countries, differing in electoral institutions, national priorities, and prior inclusion of women in government. This set of countries enables comparisons of numerous factors such as candidate's political party and candidate gender, type of post and policy area, prior inclusion of women in key government posts, and voter attributes such as sex, socio-economic status, political ideology, and gender-role attitudes. This study will provide knowledge needed to strengthen democracy throughout the world by enhancing understanding of the challenges for inclusion in government of historically under-represented groups.Technical SummaryThis project conducts an experiment to collect comparable cross-national data about societal attitudes about the capacity of women, compared to men to govern in varying levels of posts and policy areas. The experiment, which has already been carried out in Costa Rica and Israel, will be replicated in Canada, Chile, England, Sweden, the United States, and Uruguay. These countries are all established democracies, but they vary in inclusion of women in government, institutional rules, and in the centrality of social welfare vs. defense issues on the government's policy agenda. The experiment uses a candidate speech of about 500 words, plus a brief candidate biography as the treatment. In this context the sex of the candidate as well as the party she/he represent are introduced as experimental treatments. We use the effect of the party affiliation of the candidate as means to gauge the magnitude of the impact of gender on candidate evaluations. In each country, the experiment participants will be randomly assigned to a treatment group. After reading the speech, participants complete a questionnaire that ask them to evaluate the candidate for various posts and in diverse policy areas. The questionnaire also contains items about the background of the participant for conducting post hoc analysis to explore whether people from different demographic or ideological backgrounds exhibit different attitudes about the capacity of women and men to be leaders in government. Finally there is a battery of questions for conducting a sex role analysis, also for use in post hoc analysis and cross-national comparison.