Article summary
The gap in women’s representation between the Democratic and Republican parties has widened over the past thirty years. Existing explanations focus on voter responses to candidate sex but understate how voter preferences for gendered presentation shape who advances. The argument: Republican voters—especially the most conservative—favor masculine-presenting candidates in intraparty and entry-level contests, and because sex and gender are correlated this preference reduces the number of Republican women who progress through the political pipeline.