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.

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.

The longstanding link between military service and civic inclusion has sparked debate over whether women's participation in the military can advance women's inclusion in politics by signaling equal contribution to national defense and competence in traditionally masculine domains. However, we argue that advancing women's conscription may produce the reverse effect. Expanding conscription draws public attention to militaristic preparation and heightens the prominence of national security, which can strengthen societal preferences for masculine leadership. Thus, women's conscription may reinforce existing barriers to women's political leadership. Because the introduction of women's conscription signals a state's intention to deepen militarization, such debates may further disadvantage women, who are often perceived as lacking masculine-coded leadership traits. To assess the political consequences of women's conscription, we propose a multi-country survey experiment in Finland, Denmark, South Korea, and Taiwan—countries with diverse cultural contexts, currently conscripting men and considering extending conscription to women. We find that, indeed, exposure to news of women's potential conscription significantly decreases support for female political candidates and these effects are substantively similar to those of exposure to men's conscription. Moreover, we find no differences between women and men's conscription on gender attitudes, positive or negative. These findings have important implications for understanding pathways towards women's more equitable political representation, as they suggest that policies seeking to integrate women into military institutions through gender-neutral conscription may be more likely to reinforce existing gender hierarchies in political leadership rather than dismantle them.

Democratic crises unsettle citizens' expectations about political authority, yet it remains unclear whether the return to institutional stability entrenches these shifts or restores familiar hierarchies. Using a four-wave panel survey fielded during South Korea's 2024–2025 democratic crisis, we trace how institutional trust and gendered leadership attitudes evolved from the height of uncertainty through impeachment, election, and post-crisis stabilization. Trust in the presidency and National Assembly rebounded sharply once the implicated leader and party exited office. However, this recovery occurred alongside profound shifts in how citizens evaluated political leadership. As stability returned, support for strongman rule increased, citizens placed greater weight on masculine leadership traits, and they grew less likely to believe that women could provide these qualities. Support for women's political representation declined broadly across the population. Together, these findings show that while democratic trust can be quickly rebuilt, stabilization may reassert gendered hierarchies in political leadership and narrow public openness to women's inclusion.

Women's political representation has expanded across democracies in recent decades, yet progress often stalls when states face security threats. While existing research links acute shocks such as terrorism and militarized disputes to declines in women's representation, less is known about the consequences of sustained interstate hostility. This article argues that enduring geopolitical rivalries suppress women's representation by cultivating a distinctive political belief rooted in three predispositions: deference to hierarchical authority, civic duty centered on national defense, and trust in centralized state institution — a configuration I term reservist belief. Using a generalized synthetic control design and data from 82 democracies (1975–2020), I find that rivalry constrains women's electoral representation, with effects persisting nearly two decades after rivalries resolve. Further analysis of the Integrated Values Survey shows that voter bias does not stem from heightened threat perception, as observed in responses to terrorism or militarized disputes. Instead, protracted rivalry cultivates respect for authority, willingness to fight, and trust in centralized state institutions, producing societies that are less threatened and more mobilized. Evidence from an original multi-country survey confirms that reservist belief serve as a strong predictor of skepticism toward women in politics, even after accounting for conservative political ideology, militarism, and sexism.

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.