Gender, Political Orientation, and Public Reactions to Ministerial Comebacks after Scandals

Political misconduct is a widespread phenomenon that frequently brings careers to an abrupt end. While prior research has examined how either politician gender or party affiliation shape citizens’ willingness to forgive wrongdoing, we explore how these factors interact with the ideological leaning of the citizen. Focusing on violations of ethical guidelines, including harassment and financial misconduct, we theorize that if left-leaning citizens are more concerned with gender balance in politics, and right leaning citizens exhibit stronger out-group hostility, the result is a comparatively more lenient treatment of Conservative women. We test this theory in a multi-party setting using a survey experiment in Norway, a closed-list PR-system where voters can only indirectly influence parties’ decisions regarding scandalized politicians. Respondents were asked whether the party should allow a politician to return to a ministerial post after wrongdoing. We show that citizens are more lenient towards Conservative women, which is due to left-leaning citizens going soft on them. There is also a tendency that Labor women are treated more harshly by right-leaning citizens, while there is no similar difference between male politicians. Our findings thus explicitly show that citizens turn to gender cues when evaluating the future career of scandalized politicians from their out-groups.