Running Against a Woman: Do Female Opponents Shape Male Candidate Behaviors?

Objective. The male‐dominated nature of U.S. politics still means that the vast majority of women who run for office face a male opponent. As a result, one dramatic change in U.S. politics—the increase in women candidates—may contribute to another change, that being the experience of men who run for office. The research reported here begins to consider how running against a woman might have influenced the behavior of male candidates for Congress in 2002 and 2006. Past research suggests that men who run against women feel that they need to take steps to appeal to women voters by giving attention to issues of concern to women in their campaigns. Methods. To test the hypothesis that men will alter their attention to women's issues in the face of a woman candidate, I use campaign websites to examine the issue priorities of men who ran against women and compare them to a sample of men who ran against other men. Results. Counter to expectations, I find no evidence that men “play” to women voters through their attention to women's issues and instead demonstrate the relatively limited visibility that men give to these issues when they run against a woman. Conclusions. Running against a woman may have some limited impact on male candidate behaviors, but does not appear to be a significant influence.