Women on the margins of political power. Drivers of the gendered assessment of political leadership in Romania

ABSTRACT This paper explores the gendered assessment of political leadership in Romania. Using recent survey data obtained from a nationally representative sample, we found that men and women are unevenly impacted by various individual, household, and socio-cultural variables that have an unequal influence on their support for the cultural belief that men make better political leaders than women do. Our findings suggest that women’s stereotypical view of male leadership is eroded mostly by education, the presence of older children in the household, and upholding a feminist agenda. For men, only the category of those with tertiary education has a lower likelihood to believe in this stereotype, compared with the reference category of men with secondary education or below. In addition, men are less inclined to support this cultural belief when they choose reading as first leisure preference as compared to men privileging other leisure activities, while for women this relationship has not been identified. A higher income of respondents as compared to their spouses’/partners’ income reinforces the cultural stereotype of men as natural political leaders among male respondents, while for women a positive association is found in relationship with their partners undertaking masculine activities such as fixing things around the house.