The role of emotions in the symbolic representation of women in US politics
Creators: name: Rogers, Kathleen
Publisher: name: No Publisher Supplied
Year: 2022

description: This dissertation provides a new framework for understanding the relationship between gendered political representation and engagement through the mechanism of emotions, such as anger, fear, pride, and hope. I analyze congressional candidates' rhetoric about women and gendered policy issues. I then consider how citizens' emotional responses to elite rhetoric impact their levels of political engagement at the intersection of their gender, race, ethnic, and partisan identities. Methodologically, the project is based on a quantitative and qualitative content analysis of congressional campaign websites, interviews with women campaign volunteers for congressional candidates, and a secondary survey analysis of American National Election Studies data from 1980 to 2016. The content analysis allows me to examine how candidates have rhetorically represented women in elections favoring Republicans (2010) and Democrats (2018). The interviews help me uncover women's motivations to participate in politics in 2018. Finally, the survey analysis enables me to examine the relationships between emotions and political engagement over time and with nationally representative samples. Chapter 1 lays out the motivations and expected contributions of the project, and Chapter 2 reviews relevant bodies of literature that contribute to my theoretical framework. In Chapter 3, I identify patterns in congressional candidates' rhetoric about women and gendered policy issues. I then consider women's responses to candidate rhetoric using interviews with campaign volunteers. Chapters 4 and 5 utilize survey data from the American National Election Studies to demonstrate how positive and negative emotions mobilize women in the electorate over time and in electoral contexts where gender is especially salient. While Chapter 4 investigates overall trends for women compared to men, Chapter 5 turns to partisan, racial, and ethnic differences among women. Finally, Chapter 6 offers concluding remarks and discusses the implications of this research for women's political inclusion in the United States. I find that women candidates were significantly more likely than their male counterparts to discuss women on their campaign websites in 2010 and 2018. In 2018, many Democratic women candidates called out President Trump for advancing sexist and racist rhetoric and policies, identifying his administration as a threat to women. I find that similar sentiments were echoed by women activists in 2018. The activists also claimed that negative emotions were central to their motivations to participate in politics. Among women in the electorate, I find that both positive and negative emotional responses are associated with increased political engagement—but only when they conform to partisan expectations. I also find modest evidence that women's emotional responses to candidates have significantly differed from men's in electoral contexts where gender was especially salient. But women's likelihood of expressing the most mobilizing emotions varies depending on how their partisan, racial, and ethnic identities overlap.