TY - JOUR
T1 - Care to trust? Gender and trust in leaders during the Coronavirus pandemic
AU - Willis, Hannah
AU - Smith, Jessica C.
AU - Devine, Daniel
N1 - Funding Information:
This research is supported by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) award “Trust and Trustworthiness in National and Global Governance” (ref: ES/S009809/1).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - There has been praise of how female leaders have handled the Coronavirus pandemic relative to their male counterparts by presenting a more “caring” leadership. Of similar coverage has been the role of public trust for how successful governments have been in containing outbreaks. In this paper, we build on these two literatures to understand different determinants of trust during the pandemic between men and women. Following social role theory, we argue that female citizens’ trust judgements are more likely to be driven by the perception that leaders are more caring than are men, whilst men's judgements are more likely to be driven by competence judgements than women's. We test this argument using original survey data from three countries. We find that this relationship holds in the United States, but not the United Kingdom or Italy. This adds to variation in gender gaps in the USA and Europe; at the same time, it also suggests that the propensity for women to be less trusting than men is not down to (perceived) leadership traits.
AB - There has been praise of how female leaders have handled the Coronavirus pandemic relative to their male counterparts by presenting a more “caring” leadership. Of similar coverage has been the role of public trust for how successful governments have been in containing outbreaks. In this paper, we build on these two literatures to understand different determinants of trust during the pandemic between men and women. Following social role theory, we argue that female citizens’ trust judgements are more likely to be driven by the perception that leaders are more caring than are men, whilst men's judgements are more likely to be driven by competence judgements than women's. We test this argument using original survey data from three countries. We find that this relationship holds in the United States, but not the United Kingdom or Italy. This adds to variation in gender gaps in the USA and Europe; at the same time, it also suggests that the propensity for women to be less trusting than men is not down to (perceived) leadership traits.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85108091449&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/fbep20
U2 - 10.1080/17457289.2021.1924737
DO - 10.1080/17457289.2021.1924737
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85108091449
SN - 1745-7289
VL - 31
SP - 232
EP - 244
JO - Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties
JF - Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties
IS - 1
ER -