Authors
Ella J Lombard, Jovani Azpeitia, Sapna Cheryan
Publication date
2021/4/3
Journal
Psychological Inquiry
Volume
32
Issue
2
Pages
107-116
Publisher
Routledge
Description
How can we understand and rectify gender disparities in United States political leadership? We argue that the culture of US political leadership is rooted in biases that prioritize and center stereotypical notions of masculinity and Whiteness, fostering an environment that disadvantages women and especially women of color above and beyond traditional gender discrimination. Heck, Santhanagopalan, Cimpian, and Kinzler (this issue) advocate for developmental interventions designed to increase women’s interest in future political careers. We propose that increasing women’s interest must be accompanied by addressing the disadvantages posed by the environment of political leadership itself. Currently, political leadership is characterized by masculine defaults, in which traits and characteristics associated with the male gender role are valued, rewarded, or regarded as standard (Cheryan & Markus, 2020). Until we …
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