Elisabeth Gidengil - Profile on Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Elisabeth Gidengil

Gender, Behavior, and Representation

Discussions of gender, behavior, and representation have been dominated by the notion of a “gende... more Discussions of gender, behavior, and representation have been dominated by the notion of a “gender gap.” The term simply refers to a significant sex difference in political orientations or political behavior. It became a staple of political commentary in the wake of the 1980 US presidential election when a gap of eight percentage points separated women and men in their vote for Ronald Reagan, with women being much less likely than men to vote for the Republican candidate. This gap encouraged quantitatively oriented feminist scholars to start focusing on gender as a factor in understanding voting behavior and political preference. Since then, many studies have revealed that women tend to be more supportive of government intervention to help those in need, more resistant to the use of force, more “dovish” on military matters, and more tolerant of new lifestyles and changing moral values than men. Similar gaps have appeared across time and across surveys, and research done in other established Western democracies confirms that these gender gaps are a more pervasive phenomenon. Studies have also shown that women are typically less interested in politics, less knowledgeable about political matters, feel less politically efficacious than men, and are less likely to express political opinions. Yet despite these indications that women are less politically engaged, male-female differences in political activity are typically quite modest. This contrasts with the gender gap at the elite level. Concern with the lack of women in elected office has led to studies that seek to account for women’s underrepresentation and examine whether having more women in legislatures affects legislative behavior and policy outcomes. It is important to recognize that there are some potential pitfalls in pursuing research on the gender gap phenomenon, including the risk of categorical thinking, reinforcing gender stereotypes, and inviting normative comparisons. It can give rise to a female-centered perspective that risks overlooking the fact that gender influences men’s political orientations and behavior as well. Moreover, when we ask why women’s political behavior and political orientations differ from men’s—rather than the other way around—we implicitly assume a male norm. Focusing on male-female differences can also lead to a neglect of the differences among women, which often exceed those between women and men. Note that this article follows much of the literature in using the term “gender” in referring to any male-female differences and not just those that are socially constructed. Note also that the focus is mainly on established Western democracies.

Removing Rose Colored Glasses: Examining Theories of Social Capital through a Gendered Lens

Beyond the Gender Gap: The Role of Gender Identity

The Journal of Politics, Oct 1, 2021

This article argues that research on the gender gap needs to take account of differences in the n... more This article argues that research on the gender gap needs to take account of differences in the nature and salience of women’s and men’s gender identities. We theorize that the effects of sex vary depending on gender identity. As a result, the differences among women and especially among men may well exceed the differences between women and men. Drawing on the literature on masculinity and femininity, we argue that gender identity conditions the extent to which white men experience societal transformations as threats to their masculinity and respond by acting to preserve their dominant status. Because femininity is less susceptible to threat, gender identity will have a smaller impact on women. We illustrate our argument by drawing on original survey data to describe how support for Trump varies depending on both sex and gender identity.

International Migration Review, Dec 1, 2009

Gender and Candidate Communication

University of British Columbia Press eBooks, May 15, 2019

The partisan nature of support for democratic backsliding: A comparative perspective

European Journal of Political Research, Dec 21, 2021

What Do Women Know about Government Services and Benefits?

Canadian Public Policy-analyse De Politiques, 2012

This article examines how much women know about government services and benefits and discusses wh... more This article examines how much women know about government services and benefits and discusses why this type of knowledge matters. Using data from a survey as well as focus groups conducted in Montreal and Toronto, we show that the women who are most likely to need information about these programs are often the least likely to be aware of them. This is especially true of low-income women, older women, and women who came to Canada as immigrants. We end by suggesting some steps that could be taken to address these knowledge gaps.

Populism

Cambridge University Press eBooks, Feb 28, 2022

Gender and Candidate Communication: Is there a “Double Bind”?

UBC Press eBooks, May 15, 2019

What do Women Really Know: A Gendered Analysis of Political Knowledge

Comparing self-categorisation approaches to measuring gender identity

European journal of politics and gender, 2020

This article compares two different measures of gender identity. Drawing on an online survey cond... more This article compares two different measures of gender identity. Drawing on an online survey conducted with a representative sample of Americans that included both a single bipolar scale and separate masculinity and femininity scales, we compare how the same people respond depending on how gender identity is measured. The results of validation tests suggest that a single bipolar scale performs just as well in differentiating among those with sex-typical gender identities but separate masculinity and femininity scales are needed for studies investigating the political behaviour and preferences of those with sex-atypical identities.

Canadian Journal of Political Science

The COVID-19 pandemic offers a critical opportunity to assess the extent to which Canadians can b... more The COVID-19 pandemic offers a critical opportunity to assess the extent to which Canadians can be considered reliable defenders of democratic norms and institutions. In the face of such a serious threat to their physical and economic well-being, how willing are Canadians to condone the loosening of restraints on the power of the executive? This article addresses this question by drawing on the terror management and threat literatures. Combining a cross-sectional regression analysis with a vignette experiment and a candidate-choice conjoint experiment, it tests two hypotheses: that people experiencing debilitating anxiety about COVID-19 are more likely to favour weakening checks on the executive and that people will be willing to trade off legislative checks for the sake of their preferred lockdown policy. Both hypotheses are confirmed. In the face of an unprecedented health crisis, COVID-related anxiety and a desire for protective policies may trump respect for democratic norms.

reconnaissent l'aide inancière du gouvernement du Canada par l'entremise du Fonds du livre du Can... more reconnaissent l'aide inancière du gouvernement du Canada par l'entremise du Fonds du livre du Canada pour leurs activités d'édition. Les Presses de l'Université de Montréal remercient de leur soutien inancier le Conseil des arts du Canada, la Société de développement des entreprises culturelles du Québec (SODEC) et le Centre pour l'étude de la citoyenneté démocratique. imprimé au canada 8 • les québécois aux urnes Nous remercions également nos partenaires qui ont apporté leur contribution : la Chaire de recherche sur la démocratie et les institutions parlementaires, le Groupe de recherche en communication politique et la Faculté des sciences sociales de l'Université Laval. Cet esprit de collaboration a même conduit nos collègues du projet Making Electoral Democracy Work à partager leurs données avec certains collaborateurs ain que nous puissions mieux comprendre les dynamiques à l'oeuvre au Québec. À cet égard, nous remercions son directeur André Blais et le comité de direction du projet pour leur coopération. Au moment d'organiser le colloque, puis de coordonner la circulation et la validation des textes, nous avons pu compter sur le travail de notre coordonnatrice, Élise Ducharme-Rivard. Nous remercions également Maxime Paquin et Saaz Taher qui ont traduit quelques contributions initialement écrites en anglais. Enin, nous tenons à remercier le personnel des Presses de l'Université de Montréal qui a accueilli ce projet avec enthousiasme, nous a appuyés dans sa réalisation et a procédé au travail d'édition qui fait la réputation de cette maison.

Politics and the Life Sciences, 2021

We introduce thePolitics and the Life Sciencesspecial issue on Psychophysiology, Cognition, and P... more We introduce thePolitics and the Life Sciencesspecial issue on Psychophysiology, Cognition, and Political Differences. This issue represents the second special issue funded by the Association for Politics and the Life Sciences that adheres to the Open Science Framework for registered reports (RR). Here pre-analysis plans (PAPs) are peer-reviewed and given in-principle acceptance (IPA) prior to data being collected and/or analyzed, and are published contingent upon the preregistration of the study being followed as proposed. Bound by a common theme of the importance of incorporating psychophysiological perspectives into the study of politics, broadly defined, the articles in this special issue feature a unique set of research questions and methodologies. In the following, we summarize the findings, discuss the innovations produced by this research, and highlight the importance of open science for the future of political science research.

Political Research Quarterly, Nov 16, 2020

The literature on the reproduction of political participation across generations has focused almo... more The literature on the reproduction of political participation across generations has focused almost exclusively on parental effects. Yet, other family members may plausibly play an important role as well. This study explores the role of grandparents in the intergenerational transmission of the propensity to vote. Grandparental effects are theorized in terms of both social learning and status transmission. The analysis takes advantage of a unique dataset that links official turnout data for grandparents, parents, and adult grandchildren with demographic and socioeconomic information from administrative sources. Even controlling for a variety of status-related characteristics, grandchildren are significantly less likely to vote when their grandparents are non-voters. The association between grandparental turnout and the turnout of their adult grandchildren is only partly explained by the mediating effect of parental turnout. Having nonvoting grandparents appears to reinforce the effect of having parents who do not vote and may even offset the effects of having parents who are both voters. These results suggest that it is time to take the role of grandparents seriously if we want to understand how political disadvantage is transmitted across generations.

Turnout and Education: Is Education Proxying for Pre-Adult Experiences Within the Family?

Political Science Research and Methods, Oct 17, 2017

This study uses a discordant sibling-based design to assess the extent to which education is prox... more This study uses a discordant sibling-based design to assess the extent to which education is proxying for pre-adult experiences and predispositions rooted in the family. It draws on a unique data set that combines official voting records with Census data on siblings and their parents. The results show that the association between education and voting is considerably reduced when parental education, parental voting and unobserved characteristics that are shared by siblings within the same family are taken into account. This finding is confirmed by a variety of robustness checks. We end with a discussion of the benefits and limitations of sibling-based designs for testing causal hypotheses.

Healthy citizens, healthy democracies? A review of the literature

International Political Science Review, May 10, 2023

A growing literature over the past 10 years on health and political behavior has established heal... more A growing literature over the past 10 years on health and political behavior has established health status as an important source of political inequality. Poor health reduces psychological engagement with politics and discourages political activity. This lowers incentives for governments to respond to the needs of those experiencing ill health and thereby perpetuates health disparities. In this review article, we provide a critical synthesis of the state of knowledge on the links between different aspects of health and political behavior. We also discuss the challenges confronting this research agenda, particularly with respect to measurement, theory, and establishing causality, along with suggestions for advancing the field. With the COVID-19 pandemic casting health disparities into sharp focus, understanding the sources of health biases in the political process, as well as their implications, is an important task that can bring us closer to the ideals of inclusive democracy.

Frontiers in political science, Mar 9, 2021

Nearly ten years of intense study has established that health affects political behavior. It has ... more Nearly ten years of intense study has established that health affects political behavior. It has become increasingly clear that "health and illness shape who we are politically" (Carpenter 2012, 303). Physical and mental health influence people's political interest and their sense of efficacy, electoral and other forms of political participation, ideological orientations, issue preferences and vote choice, and ultimately political representation and policy responsiveness. We have also learnt a lot about the complex cognitive, psychological, financial and social mechanisms that moderate and mediate these relationships, as well as how these relationships vary across countries and welfare regimes. Much of the literature on health and political behavior to date has drawn either explicitly or implicitly on the civic voluntarism model (Verba et al., 1995). Poor health has implications for all three components identified as prerequisites for political participation: resources, motivation and recruitment. Beyond the civic voluntarism model, health has been identified as a noteworthy source of political inequality, its effects being reinforced by the inter-generational transmission of disadvantage, the unequal accumulation of wealth, descriptive asymmetries (e.g., gender, age, race), disability, and social exclusion. Having established its position as an important sub field within political science, scholarship in health and political behavior has reached the point where it would benefit from making more connections with other bodies of literature and a closer integration with a broader scientific community. This Research Topic aims to contribute to these objectives. The five articles included in the Research Topic draw from literature on rurality and human capital (Cahil and Ojeda), economic and cognitive scarcity (McGuire et al., Couture and Breux), cultural stereotypes (Reher), and thermostatic policy representation (Bernardi). These rich theoretical perspectives are applied empirically using original and unique datasets (tailored questionnaires, hard-to-survey populations, time series of public opinion and public spending), and innovative research methods. From one perspective, the results are depressingly familiar: health disparities reinforce existing power differentials. Poor health is often associated with poverty, a combination that frequently leads to political marginalization and a lack of government responsiveness to those with chronic or other health conditions. This applies particularly to mental health, which has never been a "big-ticket issue" in elections. Despite the prevalence of mental illness and its societal costs and despite high levels of support for spending among voters, public spending on mental health responds neither to policy-related problems nor to public opinion. Indeed, as Luca Bernardi points out in his article, mental health spending appears to be a case of policy misrepresentation.

This case traces the steps that we took to bring our study from initial conception to publication... more This case traces the steps that we took to bring our study from initial conception to publication. The study uses a unique dataset that links the official voting records of 18-to 30-yearolds and their parents to data about their social background characteristics. We explain how we went from testing a loosely connected set of expectations based on the political socialization literature to framing our study as a test of two major theories about the parent-child link in voting. This process necessitated a thorough rethinking of our research design. We describe how we progressed from estimating straightforward logistic regression models to performing a causal mediation analysis. We emphasize the importance of understanding the assumptions that underlie causal mediation analysis and of incorporating robustness checks. Finally, our case illustrates how the peer-review process stimulated us to develop a stronger theoretical framework and a more sophisticated research design.