Iron ladies, men of steel:The effects of gender stereotyping on the perception of male and female candidates are moderated by prototypicality

Women remain a minority in politics. In nearly all countries, including parliamentary, democracies, women are still underrepresented in national parliament and other representative institutions. Research has argued that there is a bias against women in elections. Here we study the process behind this phenomenon by investigating the effect of a candidate's gender and gender prototypicality on judgment of the suitability of this candidate in elections. The first experiment shows that when voters think topics that stereotypically demand male characteristics (e.g., competitiveness) arc, important, they prefer male candidates, while they prefer female candidates when topics that stereotypically demand female for characteristics (e.g., pro-sociability) are important. Experiment 2 replicates this and shows that this effect is fully reversed,for counterprototypical (i.e., in physical appearance) candidates. This supports a sterectoping as prediction account, and has important theoretical and practical implications. Copyright (C) 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.