Female candidates face a messaging challenge. There is strong association between masculinity and political leadership. Stressing can result in likability backlash for female often seen as lacking feminine qualities, such warmth. Preventing by highlighting qualities also harm candidates. Current scholarship offers conflicting conclusions about how balance these gendered challenges. We fill this...

Social dominance theory (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999) contends that institutional-level mechanisms exist that reinforce and perpetuate existing group-based inequalities, but very few such mechanisms have been empirically demonstrated. We propose that gendered wording (i.e., masculine- and feminine-themed words, such as those associated with gender stereotypes) may be a heretofore unacknowledged, in...

This paper details the diagnostic discourse that has accumulated around feminine boys, including the traditional presuppositions of Gender Identity Disorder (GID). The GID discourse is examined for the ways in which it is built upon unquestioned beliefs about masculinity. Distinct from most modern considerations of gender, no effort has been made to critically theorize gender when thinking abou...

Feminine physical characteristics in women are positively correlated with markers of their mate quality. Previous research on men's judgments of women's facial attractiveness suggests that men show stronger preferences for feminine characteristics in women's faces when their own testosterone levels are relatively high. Such results could reflect stronger preferences for high quality mates when ...

The contention that femininity makes women unsuited for political participation has roots in feminist theory and political science. This study investigated whether the desirable and undesirable dimensions of femininity, corresponding to Feminine Interpersonal Relations (FIR: warmth, nurturance, and interpersonal appeal) and Feminine Self-Doubt (FSD: submissiveness, self-doubt, anxiety, and pass...

Men with low testosterone (feminine men) invest in relationships and offspring more than men with high testosterone (masculine men). Women's attraction to testosterone dependent traits (e.g. masculine face shape) is enhanced during the late-follicular, fertile phase of the menstrual cycle. Attractive, feminine women have stronger preferences for masculine men as possible long-term partners than...