Arab Voters Prefer Female Candidates, Even in Male Policy Areas

Conventional wisdom in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) predicts a male advantage at the polls driven by sexism. A large-scale conjoint experiment overturns that expectation: voters in six Arab countries are more likely to support female candidates and rate them as more capable, even in stereotypically male domains.

🧪 How Voter Preferences Were Measured

A randomized conjoint experiment was administered to over 30,000 respondents across six MENA countries to test the effect of candidate gender on electoral support and perceived competence.

• Sample: more than 30,000 respondents in six Arab countries
• Method: randomized conjoint design that varied candidate attributes and recorded both vote intentions and competence ratings
• Outcomes: expressed support for candidates and perceived capability across policy domains

🔎 Key Findings

• Both male and female respondents are more likely to express support for female candidates than for male candidates.
• Female candidates are judged as more capable than male counterparts, including in domains traditionally seen as masculine.
• The pro-female pattern holds across the pooled sample from the six countries and across respondent genders.

💡 What Explains These Results

The evidence points to rising demand for political outsiders as a central mechanism. Shifts in what citizens want from leaders (leader roles) combined with changing gender stereotypes (gender roles) reduce traditional anti-female bias at the ballot box.

📌 Why This Matters

• Challenges the assumption that MENA electorates uniformly favor men because of entrenched sexism.
• Extends gender congruity theory by showing that both evolving gender-role beliefs and leader-role expectations can produce electoral advantages for women.
• Implications for candidate recruitment, campaign strategy, and theories of representation in contexts undergoing political and social change.