Does portraying women as wartime victims shape citizens' perceptions of their leadership potential? Conflict-related media coverage disproportionately frames women as victims of war, yet little is known about whether these portrayals shape public attitudes toward women's political authority in security and foreign policy — domains in which women remain significantly underrepresented. Highlighting gendered victimization may increase support for women's representation by casting women as especially attuned to humanitarian suffering and the needs of vulnerable populations. At the same time, such portrayals may activate paternalistic protectionism that undercuts confidence in women's political authority. Analysis of over 15,000 Facebook posts from 17 major news outlets covering conflicts in Afghanistan, Israel-Palestine, and Ukraine-Russia shows that women's wartime suffering is a persistent feature of conflict coverage, consistently outnumbering references to men's victimization and frequently linked to children, sexual violence, and social vulnerability. An original preregistered survey experiment in the United States (N = 995) provides causal evidence that exposure to narratives emphasizing women's wartime suffering increases support for women's leadership in peacebuilding, including conflict resolution and post-conflict negotiations. These effects, however, do not extend to support for women's leadership in militarized security domains such as national defense or warfare, revealing an asymmetry in how victimhood shapes gendered leadership evaluations. Exploratory analyses further indicate that although victimization narratives heighten support for women's descriptive and substantive representation, they also strengthen benevolent sexism, which activates stereotypes that women lack the competence associated with hard security roles. Together, these findings suggest that highlighting women's wartime experiences can broaden demand for their inclusion in peacebuilding, yet expanding their authority in militarized security roles will require long-term shifts toward gender-egalitarian norms.

Extensive literature shows that acute security shocks such as terrorism and war reduce women’s political representation, yet the consequences of sustained interstate hostility remain underexplored. I argue that rivalries undermine women’s representation by cultivating reservist beliefs—a political culture comprising deference to authority, civic duty toward national defense, and trust in centralized state institutions—that prepares citizens for militarized escalation while channeling confidence toward male leadership. Using data from 83 democracies (1975-2020) and a range of empirical approaches to identify causal effects in observational data, including generalized synthetic control and time-series cross-sectional analysis, I show that rivalry significantly constrains women's electoral representation. Even when states exit rivalry, divergence from the counterfactual trajectory—what representation would have looked like had rivalry persisted—takes over a decade to materialize, indicating that the adverse effects of rivalry persist well beyond its formal resolution. These results also hold among rivalry states without sustained militarized conflict or terrorism, suggesting that the findings are not driven by rivalry states with recurrent conflicts. To test the mechanism, I draw on the Integrated Values Survey, covering more than 120,000 respondents worldwide. The results show that citizens in rivalry states do not exhibit heightened threat perceptions, but instead display stronger reservist beliefs, with all three pillars predicting bias against women's leadership. Further analyses reveal that unlike rivalry, exposure to terrorism and war is associated with heightened threat perceptions, but not reservist beliefs. Together, these findings provide some of the strongest evidence to date that protracted rivalry undermines women's representation and establish reservist beliefs as a novel mechanism.

Democratic backsliding and resilience shape citizens’ evaluations of the political leaders involved. We argue that they can also influence citizens’ broader beliefs about political leadership. We examine support for male political authority—the belief that men are especially suited to political leadership and that effective leaders possess masculine-coded traits—across South Korea’s 2024–25 democratic crisis and recovery. We posit that periods of acute democratic strain may weaken attachment to male political authority. As institutions recover, however, familiar expectations about who should lead and how reassert themselves. We test this claim with an original four-wave panel survey conducted after martial law and the National Assembly’s impeachment vote and continuing through the Constitutional Court ruling, presidential campaign, and post-election transition. Respondents initially expressed weaker attachment to male political authority, but this openness receded as ordinary politics resumed. Resilience can thus stabilize institutions while leaving the gendered foundations of political authority intact.

Military service has long been linked to civic inclusion, raising the possibility that women's participation in the military could likewise advance women's political empowerment by changing gender attitudes, signaling women's equal contribution and competence in national defense. We argue, however, that extending conscription to women may instead reinforce barriers to women's political leadership by increasing the salience of militarism, thereby strengthening preferences for masculine leadership. To test this argument, we conduct a multi-country survey experiment in Finland, Denmark, South Korea, and Taiwan. We find that exposure to news about women's conscription significantly reduces support for female political candidates, with effects similar to those of news about men's conscription. We also, surprisingly, find no meaningful differences across women's and men's conscription conditions in downstream gender attitudes or support for women leaders. These findings suggest that gender-neutral conscription policies may reinforce rather than weaken existing gender hierarchies in political leadership.

Can social movements be a vehicle, not just for advancing their stated demands, but for building solidarity between majority and minority participants? We argue that minority groups' prominent role in mass protest can generate public support for their equal standing — but only when their participation is portrayed alongside majority participants under a shared civic identity, which reveals the gap between their equal contributions and unequal treatment. When marginalized group is singled out as a sole protagonist, cross-cutting solidarity may not materialize. An original survey experiment in South Korea following the 2024 pro-democracy protests (N=1,674) supports this argument. Portraying protests as driven by a civic coalition of both women and men increases support for women's equality policies among protest supporters, operating through perceptions of deservingness, whereas portraying women as the protagonists produces no effect. A follow-up experiment (N=1,000) confirms that civic coalition portrayals increase attention to structural inequalities women face.

In the U.S., the Department of Defense is the only cabinet ministry that remains male-dominated. Is public opinion part of the barrier to women's access to power? How would citizens, both at home and abroad, respond to women's appointment as Secretary of Defense? This paper explores the opinions of ordinary Americans and our allies towards women defense ministers. We examine attitudes towards the government and the military with the appointment of a woman as Secretary of Defense. While stereotypes towards women are eroding, defense remains an area in which citizens perceive men to be more competent than women. Our study allows us to assess whether public opinion is a barrier to women's appointment to these positions. It also allows us to prepare for a future in which women gain access to this portfolio. Given that women are unlikely to remain indefinitely excluded from the post, it is important to assess how their appointment would affect public opinion at home as well as perceptions of the U.S. abroad.

Internet access is expanding in low- and middle-income contexts, yet its political effects remain unclear and may depend on how people connect. We study a pre-registered field experiment in a low-income South African township, where the high cost of mobile data constrains use. Around the 2024 national election, we randomly provided households with 8–12 months of uncapped home internet and cross-randomized exposure to an online get-out-the-vote campaign. Combining household surveys, verified turnout, and behavioral traces, we find that home connections increase in-person local political engagement — attendance at ward/community meetings and complaints to ward/municipal officials — while leaving voter turnout and online political participation unchanged. We detect no systematic shifts in political knowledge, views, or broad news consumption patterns. Evidence is consistent with a behavioral channel in which home connectivity raises time spent at home and incidental exposure to local governance and offline networks, with suggestive stronger effects among men. The results show that expanding home internet, distinct from mobile data, can strengthen place-based participation without mobilizing online activism or turnout, underscoring that the mode of access conditions the political consequences of going online.