Presidential Approval From a Gendered Lens: The Case of President Tsai Ing-wen

Female leaders have been found to face more challenges in different stages of their political careers. To contribute to the debate about why female politicians encounter harsher conditions than their male counterparts in politics, we propose the theory of dual obstacles. Our theory argues that male voters evaluate female politicians negatively based on gender identity while female voters do not necessarily support female politicians. Female voters’ support for female politicians is mainly dependent upon their policy satisfaction. We use the TEDS 2024 survey data to examine if the corresponding hypotheses would be supported empirically. The results suggest that contrary to our theoretical expectation, there is no significant difference in female leaders’ approval ratings between female and male voters. It is found that female voters are not homogenous and they are less likely to approve of female leaders if their feminist policy expectations are not met or if they differ ideologically.