Are Shifting Gender Relations Perceived as a Social Status Threat? Experimental Evidence on the Role of Gender for Status Politics.

Recent research has increasingly acknowledged the important role of the resistance to shifting gender relations for the radical right backlash. However, few studies have attempted to single out and systematically assess how dynamics of women's increasing status affect attitudes and voting propensities among both men and women. On top, there is a lack of research causally testing these relations. This paper applies a survey experiment to address this gap and causally identify whether gender plays an independent role for the radical right backlash. It does so by investigating whether the increasing political representation of women evokes a social status threat among men. Conversely, it assesses whether women are discontent about persisting inequality and how perspectives of future status gains affect their attitudes and political behavior. The priming experiment was fielded in an original online survey in Germany in January 2022. The results show that gendered political power relations and their development are influential for respondents’ social status and political discontent. They also highlight the importance of paying more attention to the political reactions of status winners, as the effects on voting propensities among women – in favor of Green parties – were stronger than among men.