Gender, descriptive representation, and the public legitimacy of international organizations

Abstract How does descriptive representation influence citizens’ perceptions of international organizations’ (IOs) legitimacy? While past work has investigated the impact of procedural and substantive dimensions on the legitimacy of IOs, the effect of descriptive representation remains largely unaddressed. We contribute to this literature by investigating whether greater gender representation increases the legitimacy of an IO when the IO governs a stereotypically “feminine” (vs. “masculine”) issue area and whether this relationship is contingent on attitudes toward gender equality. We test our expectations using pre-registered 2 × 2 factorial and conjoint experiments in Canada ( n = 1998). We find consistent evidence that individuals evaluate the legitimacy of both the IO and leader more favorably when the leader is female rather than male. Issue area and gender egalitarian attitudes attenuate the magnitude of this effect, but do not reverse it. Our article advances the study of gender representation in global governance and popular sources of IO legitimacy.