This study explores the role of influencers in shaping public opinion about feminism in Spain, a country where gender equality and feminist discourse have gained relevant public prominence. Although the figure of the influencer may appear novel, the process of opinion formation mirrors that which has historically prevailed for celebrities in traditional media. However, the inherent characteristics of social media endow influencers with even greater tools of persuasion. We test this argument by collecting a representative survey of the Spanish population and analyzing posts and videos from influencers’ profiles, employing manual content analysis. Our findings reveal that audiences of incidental feminist influencers exhibit stronger pro-feminist attitudes, while those of incidental anti-feminist influencers lean toward anti-feminist views. Additional analysis using propensity score matching offers further evidence of the persuasive power of influencers, even after adjusting for potential selection biases in their audiences.

Transgender rights are receiving increasingly greater attention in policymaking arenas around the globe. However, few studies empirically investigate the factors that shape the protection of these types of legal rights from a global perspective. Therefore, this article aims to contribute to the literature by examining how one potential correlate – religion – influences countries’ recognition of transgender rights. More specifically, this article distinguishes between the presence of religion in state institutions versus the society, allowing for a more nuanced investigation of the different avenues through which religion may influence a country’s trans-specific laws. Analyzing data from 173 countries between 2000 and 2021, this study finds that while religious influence over society more consistently explains variation in transgender rights, religion in government also plays a significant role. Overall, the findings shed light on an often-understudied population and offer valuable insights into the areas where transgender individuals may be most vulnerable.

Social role theorists argue that the roles that people inhabit and their experiences within can alter their attitudes. We use Swedish panel data to demonstrate how involvement in the parental role changes attitudes toward government policies differently for fathers and mothers. For fathers who take parental leave, the caregiving activities accompanying this leave conflict with stereotypical masculine experiences and such counter-stereotypical engagement should be transformative. We find that fathers who take more parental leave favor care provided by the state. For mothers, we hypothesize and find that the caregiving role during parental leave confirms a female-typical role, resulting in small effects that are not significant. We conclude with a discussion of how state policies can alter the effects of gender by providing specific experiences within a role, such as parental leave, and the significance of finding results in a country with high baseline levels of gender equality.

Past work on media coverage of candidates for political office has explored gender differences in quantity, substance, and tone with mixed results depending on the office, race, and context. We draw on the stereotype content model (SCM) to examine gendered patterns of media coverage of candidates on the trait dimensions of warmth and competence in the 2020 U.S. Democratic presidential primary. Combining Natural Language Processing and manual analysis of news, we find that female candidates receive more negative than positive warmth coverage, while male candidates receive more tonally balanced warmth coverage, which suggests that female leaders are penalized on the dimension of warmth. Additionally, white women received more warmth coverage than women of color and women of color receive more competence coverage than white women. The findings suggest news media may portray white women and women of color candidates as lacking gender congruent traits like warmth but may portray white women as possessing role congruent traits like competence.

Conventional wisdom holds that women’s political underrepresentation partly stems from gendered stereotypes, with women candidates perceived as lower in ability and assertiveness, and as less competent to handle key issues like the economy and national security. However, recent research uncovers how societal leadership stereotypes have become less advantageous for men. Two conjoint experiments show that Americans’ stereotypes about political candidates follow similar trends: although women candidates (following conventional expectations) are perceived as friendlier and more moral than men, they are also seen as higher in ability and as equally assertive. Similarly, men and women candidates are perceived as equally competent to handle the economy, crime, and national security. Further analyses reveal that liberals and individuals low in hostile sexism hold stereotypes most favorable to women. These findings suggest that gendered candidate stereotypes likely constitute less of a hindrance to women seeking political nominations than in the past.