Power of Suggestion? Leadership Signals, Politics, Religion, and Women’s Support for the Disadvantaged

We assess the role of social signals about the appropriateness of women in leadership roles in either the political or religious domain. The relevant literature leads to expectations of a relatively clear effect on women’s efficacy levels when encountering social suggestions that women’s skills are...

Full description

Saved in:  
Bibliographic Details
Authors: Calfano, Brian Robert 1977- (Author) ; Straka, Alexis (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
Check availability: HBZ Gateway
Journals Online & Print:
Drawer...
Fernleihe:Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste
Published: MDPI [2020]
In: Religions
Year: 2020, Volume: 11, Issue: 12
Further subjects:B political efficacy
B Public Policy
B Randomized experiments
B disadvantaged groups
B Religious Organizations
B women’s leadership
Online Access: Volltext (doi)
Volltext (kostenfrei)
Description
Summary:We assess the role of social signals about the appropriateness of women in leadership roles in either the political or religious domain. The relevant literature leads to expectations of a relatively clear effect on women’s efficacy levels when encountering social suggestions that women’s skills are better used in other ways. However, less certain is whether encouraging women away from leadership in religious organizations impacts their sense of effect on political outcomes, including policies in support of disadvantaged outgroups. Utilizing a framing experiment embedded in a statewide public opinion poll, we find that social suggestion that women should stay away from religious leadership has statistically significant and negative effects on efficacy levels among our sample’s subset of evangelical women. At the same time, these anti-religious leadership signals move evangelical women away from supporting policy statements benefitting a disadvantaged outgroup. Given that it is the power of suggestion regarding religious, not political, leadership that leads to the effects among evangelical women, we offer additional paths for future research to explore on this wider topic.
ISSN:2077-1444
Contains:Enthalten in: Religions
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.3390/rel11120629