Feminizing Political Institutions: How Women Change Perceptions of Politics and Improve Democracy

Feminizing Political Institutions considers representation from a new perspective by looking at how changes within the demographic composition of a political institution can change the way citizens think about and engage with politics. It argues that the recent gains made in women's representation across all levels of government has the potential to undo the “white-masculine” stereotypes long associated with political institutions. The book advances and tests an original theory of institutional stereotype change that connects levels of women's descriptive representation to the stereotypic perceptions people hold of political institution. People see political institutions through a lens of masculinity, and the masculine lens of politics limits the participation of women, feminine-typed individuals, people of color, and other minoritized groups. The author argues that when women's descriptive representation increases so that there are more women serving in elected political office people will start to associate political institutions with more feminine qualities. People not only see political institutions as masculine, but people see institutions through the lens of white-masculinity.

Breaking down the perception of political institutions as “white” institutions requires a greater disruption in representation beyond simply electing more women. The book posits that the presence of more women of color in political institutions can have a particularly potent effect when it comes to breaking down the raced-gendered stereotypes associated with politics; it empirically tests how women's descriptive representation changes the masculinity of politics and how women of color's descriptive representation changes perceptions of white-masculinity. This book, therefore, shows that women's descriptive representation shifts the stereotypic perceptions of political institutions.

Nichole M. Bauer is an Associate Professor of Political Communication in the Department of Political Science at the LSU Manship School of Mass Communication. Her research investigates the persistence of women's under-representation at nearly every level of political office in the United States. Bauer approaches this question from two perspectives. First, she examines how and when gender stereotypes affect the impressions voters form of women running for political office. Second, she investigates how women use strategic political communication to combat the implicit biases among voters.