Demographic Factors In Political Leadership

1723 Words7 Pages
2..4 Impact of demographic factors Demographic factors such as age, marital status, education and ethnicity have impact on women’s participation in political leadership. Age is positively related to political participation. To a certain point, the older one is, the more likely he or she will participate in politics (Verba, Schlozman, and Brady 1995). This is true for many reasons. Older people are more likely to have the resources to participate, such as education, income, and civic skills (Conway, 1985). Older people are also more settled in life and have roots in society that younger people do not have (Conway, 1985). Since they have roots in a community, they feel a stronger connection to their community, and are therefore more likely…show more content…
Women are less likely to engage in politics because of their lower access to socio-economic resources (Coffe & Bonzendahl, 2010). For example, men are far more likely to be employed full-time than women, and employment is positively related to political participation, information and efficacy among U.S. respondents (Schlozman, et al. 1994, 1999). The controlling for employment status may mediate a substantial portion of a gender gap in participation. Empirical studies show that women of different ages who were in the upper echelons of a range of occupations were more willing to vote for a woman because of her vision, policy, leadership style and achievements rather than her sex (Healey, 2013) Participants cited fundraising and gender bias as barriers to their political endeavors. Raising money as a woman who wants to get into political office is difficult. (Morton, 2013). Findings that the lack of political ambition, women need to be asked to run for office, and women do not have well-developed fund-raising networks resulted to low women’s participation in political leadership (Ziegler as cited by Bremond,…show more content…
Countries in which citizens are particularly religious tend to be conservative and less likely to encourage the election of women (McCulloch, 2012). Further research on gender and occupational stereotypes suggests that political office is perceived as a predominantly masculine occupation (Bligh & Kohles, as cited by Morton 2013). As cited by Giraldo (2016), Eagly and Karau (2002) explained that prejudicial biases exist towards female leaders due to an incongruity between societal expectations of gender roles for women with those of leadership roles. In other words, the roles considered “appropriate” for women are not roles in which leadership as a behavior or trait is generally required for success; and, when roles requiring leadership behaviors or traits are enacted by women, the women enacting those roles are often viewed less favorably California women parliamentarians often have to worry about how masculine or feminine they should be to be perceived as effective leaders (Morton, as cited by (Bremond, 2017). Men are often arbitrarily perceived as competent, whereas women have to prove their competence (Donaldson,

More about Demographic Factors In Political Leadership

Open Document