Women underrepresented or men overrepresented? Framing influences women's affective and behavioral responses to gender gap in political leadership

Abstract

Efforts to promote women in leadership have led to some high profile successes, yet unequal representation of women and men in such positions persists. The media often portrays the gap as women's underrepresentation. We examine whether reframing this gap as men's overrepresentation elicits greater anger and increases intentions and behaviors to remediate the disparity. In a meta-analysis of three pilot experiments (Studies 1a-1c), framing the gap as men's overrepresentation in political (but not business) leadership elicits more anger at the disparity among women perceivers (but not men) and increases perceptions that the gap is unjust. Moreover, we find that anger at the disparity predicts stronger intentions and numerous behaviors to redress the inequality, such as reading more on how change the status quo (Study 1a), writing stronger letters supporting proposed legislation addressing gender disparity (Study 1b), and stronger desire to donate to gender bias reduction programs (Study 1a-1c). In a registered experiment (Study 2) we replicated these findings: men's overrepresentation framing increases women's anger at the gender gap in political leadership and mediates the association between framing and collective action supporting gender parity. We also find only weak evidence that a change in framing elicits a backlash anger response at the rhetorical framing itself. Moreover, making salient the ways in which the social climate is either hostile or sympathetic to women's causes does not moderate the framing effect. Overall, this work suggests that demographic framing influences emotional and behavioral responses to the gender gap in political leadership.