Putting A Fresh Face Forward: Does the Gender of a Police Chief Affect Public Perceptions?

As the public, policymakers, and scholars increasingly call for police reform, one commonly proposed solution is to increase the number of female officers and leaders under the assumption that female police will be perceived as more trustworthy, less violent, and more effective at addressing gendered crimes. Using a survey experiment, we explore whether there is a link between passive representation in police leadership and civilians’ perceptions of substantive representation by the police. We argue that due to feminine stereotypes and role congruity theory, female police chiefs should be perceived as more effective at addressing gendered crimes, corruption, police brutality, and community relations, but be evaluated as less competent on addressing violent crimes. We find that female police chiefs are considered to be more competent at handling gendered crimes (with little relationship with non-gendered crimes), and are viewed as more able to address corruption, police brutality, and community relations. Female police chiefs are also more likely to receive higher levels of overall support. We emphasize that our study points to the importance of passive representation within police leadership, but caution that increasing women’s representation may be a necessary, but not sufficient condition to improve relations between the public and the police.

The high-profile police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and others, and subsequent protests have forced an American reckoning on policing. After the shooting of Taylor and the subsequent firing of the police chief, the Louisville Metro Police Department appointed Yvette Gentry as interim chief. Gentry is not only the city's first female chief, but also its first Black female chief. Gentry explicitly links her identity as a Black woman to the potential for healing divisions between the police and the community: "Being a Black woman and a veteran and a former police officer, when you've worn all the hats of people who are out here wanting to be heard...People are just so far apart. And maybe I can be in the middle and I can bridge it." 1 These sentiments echo claims that passive representation within police leadership has significant symbolic effects and that police and the public have expectations about the behavior of female (and Black) police chiefs. To test these claims, we examine whether female police chiefs are perceived and evaluated differently by the public. Are women police chiefs viewed as more trustworthy and effective than their male counterparts?
While previous scholarship explores whether female officers alter policing outcomes, the majority of this literature focuses on rank-and-file officers, proposing two related, yet distinct causal mechanisms: female police officers act differently and/or the public interacts uniquely with them due to perceptions of female police officers (Riccucci et al. 2014, Schuck et al. 2021, Barnes and Beaulieu 2019, Flores-Macías and Zarkin 2021, Shoub et al. 2021, Ba et al. 2021, Poteyeva and Sun 2009). We test the latter mechanism with regards to police leadership by exploring the gender of police chiefs. 2 Chiefs are the "face" of their police agency, are one of the most visible public sector positions, and play a particularly important symbolic role to alter public attitudes toward the police (Rainguet and Dodge 2001). Moreover, the hiring of a police chief is often a highly political process and the police chief's actions has political implications (Bouza 2013). Given their high visibility, their power within police departments, and their political influence, it is critical to examine the gendered dimensions of public perceptions of police chiefs.
Building on theories of substantive representation and role congruity theory, we argue that women police chiefs may be evaluated differently than men due to the public's assumptions about women police chiefs' behavior, priorities, and experiences (Eagly 1987, Eagly and Karau 2002, Keiser et al. 2002, Meier and Nicholson-Crotty 2006. While gender stereotypes may harm women's perceived effectiveness, especially at addressing violent crime, as women are expected to be weaker and less authoritative than men (Eagly 1987, Koenig et al. 2011, feminine stereotypes may also cast women as more trustworthy, fair, restrained, and communal (Huddy and Terkildsen 1993b). Therefore, although role congruity theory would expect female police chiefs to be judged more harshly than male police chiefs, the public may desire feminine traits and stereotypes in police leadership regarding some tasks. Thus, although female police chiefs should be evaluated worse regarding violent crime, they should be evaluated more positively regarding genderbased crimes, corruption, police brutality, and community relations.
We conduct a survey experiment via Lucid in which we randomly vary the sex of a new hypothetical police chief. 3 We test whether female police chiefs are evaluated differently than male chiefs at reducing gender-based crimes and non-gender-based crimes-most prominently, violent crime-as well as how they address corruption, police brutality, and community engagement. Our findings demonstrate that female police chiefs are perceived as more effective at addressing gender-based crimes, including domestic violence and sexual violence, compared to male police chiefs. Additionally, respondents perceived female police chiefs to be more effective at addressing police brutality and corruption and as more likely to engage with community leaders. Respondents indicated that they were more likely to support a female police chief relative to a male police chief overall. In contrast to our expectations, female police chiefs were not perceived as less effective at addressing violent crime. These findings underscore the symbolic value of passive representation within police leadership. This study refines and extends the findings of previous scholarship that found that women rank-and-file police officers and politicians are viewed as less corrupt, more trustworthy, and legitimate to police leadership (Riccucci et al. 2014, Schuck et al. 2021, Barnes and Beaulieu 2019, Flores-Macías and Zarkin 2021.
Overall, improving representation in police leadership may be a necessary, but not sufficient condition, to repair trust and improve cooperation between police and communities.

Passive and Symbolic Representation and Public Perceptions of the Police
Passive representation-or the degree to which the bureaucracy reflects the population's demographic characteristicsoften improves outcomes for marginalized individuals, especially through active representation, which occurs when the bureaucrat advocates for the interests of their counterparts in the general population (Keiser et al. 2002, Meier andNicholson-Crotty 2006). However, regardless of the bureaucrat's actions, their presence alone may impact the public's perceptions of toward the institution through symbolic representation (Theobald and Haider-Markel 2009). The public may believe that the shared identity bureaucrat has similar values and may experience greater psychological satisfaction with the government, leading to improved perceptions of legitimacy, increased trust, and greater coproduction Van Ryzin 2017, Riccucci et al. 2014). While evidence supporting symbolic representation regarding race and policing is mixed (Theobald and Haider-Markel 2009, Lee and Nicholson-Crotty 2022, Headley et al. 2021), women's presence in police forces (and other bureaucratic institutions) increases perceptions of fairness, legitimacy, and support (Riccucci et al. 2014, Schuck et al. 2021. 4 Although symbolic representation does not require a bureaucrat to act differently, attitudes often improve due to expectations that the bureaucrat will act differently, informed by stereotypes and experiences associated with their identity.

Police Leadership
Most literature on public evaluations of policewomen focuses on rank-and-file police officers, rather than evaluations of police leaders. Police chiefs are important to study as police chiefs often focus on political issues and public opinion as they serve as the "face" of the police, work directly with elected officials and other government agencies, and address the public during crises (Rainguet and Dodge 2001). Police leaders are overwhelmingly male: as of 2016, women headed roughly 3% of local police departments (Brooks 2019). Despite their low numbers, women have broken the "brass" ceiling of several major metropolitan police departments, including Atlanta, Philadelphia, Portland, Louisville, Seattle, Columbus, and Oakland.
Police chiefs' high visibility and influence over policing practices may increase the likelihood that the identity of the chief impacts public perceptions. 5 The representation of women or non-white police chiefs and in other highly visible positions, such as police spokespersons, may alter the public's attitudes regarding the larger police forces' diversity and behavior (Cohen Marks andStout 2011, Simpson andCroft 2020). For example, police chief participation in gay pride parades positively projects images of the police to the public, specifically the LGBTQ+ community, to highlight the police department's inclusivity (Russell 2017). Similarly, in Los Angeles, Black residents expressed greater support for Black police chiefs (Cohen Marks and Stout 2011). Police departments and police chiefs seem cognizant of their potential role to impact community-police interactions as demonstrated by the growth in public information officers, who often report directly to the police chief (Motschall and Cao 2002). Finally, police chiefs often embody a "masculine ideal," indicating that female police chiefs represent a more severe rupture from expectations of both gender roles and of police cultures than female rank-and-file officers (Silvestri 2018). Thus, police chiefs serve in an important symbolic role to alter public attitudes toward the police.

Gender Stereotypes and Perceptions of Female Police Chiefs
Gender stereotypes encompass preconceived ideas about the attributes, characteristics, or roles that should be possessed by women and men to align with expected social roles (Eagly 1987, Eagly andKarau 2002). Feminine stereotypes view women as caring, compassionate, sensitive, weak, and communal, which can be traced to the supportive social roles traditionally assigned to women, such as homemaker, caregiver, or mother (Eagly 1987, Prentice andCarranza 2002). Masculine stereotypes cast men as tough, strong, aggressive, assertive, and authoritative (Eagly 1987, Koenig et al. 2011, stemming from men's more traditional roles as political and business agents. These gender stereotypes inform expectations about behavior, interests, and policies. For example, "women's issues" often include healthcare, childcare, and social welfare, whereas "men's issues" include defense, foreign policy, and business (Huddy and Terkildsen 1993b).
These stereotypes often impact the public's evaluation of women and men in government. At times, feminine stereotypes harm female candidates and leaders when the public assumes that women lack experience, leadership skills, strength, and authority (Huddy and Terkildsen 1993b, Holman et al. 2016, Bauer 2015. However, women may be advantaged when offices or campaigns focus on stereotypical feminine issues, such as corruption, sexual harassment, or education (Funk andPhilips 2019, Schwarz andCoppock 2021). Other factors may influence this relationship, like level of office, political party, incumbency status, and salient issues (Bauer 2020b;a, Dolan 2014, Koch 2000, Schwarz and Coppock 2021. How might gender stereotypes impact the public's evaluation of police chiefs? Gender stereotypes may both harm and benefit female police chiefs depending on whether the evaluation is based on an outcome or behavior that is feminine or masculine. Role congruity theory argues that an individual will be positively evaluated when their characteristics or behavior align with their group's perceived social role (Eagly 1987, Eagly andKarau 2002). Thus, when a woman acts in a perceived masculine way, the incongruity between feminine stereotypical expectations and outcomes may lead to negative reactions. Similarly, men in roles typically perceived as feminine will also be more harshly evaluated. While policing is considered a masculine role, within policing tasks there is variation in the gendered expectations.
Gender stereotypes expect men to be more tough, authoritative, strong, and aggressive. These attributes align with expectations of how police officers act to address violent crime. Security and "crime fighting" are typically masculine roles-men are cast as the "protectors," while women are cast as needing protection (Clinkinbeard et al. 2020, Lawless 2004, Holman et al. 2016, Sanbonmatsu and Dolan 2009. Police leaders are cast as masculine heroes with the strength, ambition, stamina, and endurance to climb the ranks (Silvestri 2018). Thus, female police leaders do not align with typical feminine social expectations of women nor with the masculine stereotypes of the police. Female police chiefs may be perceived more negatively regarding addressing violent crime relative to male police chiefs because they are assuming a masculine role, in contrast to social expectations.
Hypothesis 1: Female police chiefs will be perceived as less effective at addressing violent crime than male police chiefs.
While "crime fighting" may be considered a masculine role, certain crimes are more likely to affect women and thus, addressing these crimes may be considered relatively more feminine. Role congruity theory indicates that since sexual and gender-based violence is deemed a "women's issue," the public may use feminine stereotypes to assume a female police chief is interested in and effective at addressing sexual and gender-based crime and evaluate her more favorably than a male police chief. For example, abused women view female police as more sympathetic and understanding relative to men (Kennedy and Homant 1983). Beyond direct victims' possible preferences for female officers, women's representation in sexual assault and domestic violence units increases the public's perceived legitimacy of the police and support for police leadership (Riccucci et al. 2014, Schuck et al. 2021. Therefore, female police chiefs may be viewed as more effective at addressing gender-based crimes due to perceptions that women are more likely to prioritize these issues, more likely to be sensitive to the victims, and more effective at addressing them.
Hypothesis 2: Female police chiefs will be perceived as more effective at addressing gender-based crimes, such as domestic violence and sexual assault, than male police chiefs.
While role congruity theory would expect that female police chiefs are judged more harshly with regards of stereotypical policing roles (Eagly and Karau 2002), the public may desire feminine traits and stereotypes in police leadership as a possible solution to problems such as police violence, corruption, and tensions between police and communities, especially in light of criticism of the police. Feminine stereotypes suggest that women are less agentic, more communal, and more trustworthy. The public may believe these stereotypes will lead to less problematic behavior and less corruption within the police (Barnes and Beaulieu 2019,  Beaulieu 2019, Flores-Macías and Zarkin 2021). For example, there are various reasons that female police are viewed as less corrupt-most of which are based in feminine stereotypes-including beliefs that women are more honest, trustworthy, or risk averse and do not have access to old boys' networks that facilitate corruption ). These stereotypes not only impact public opinion, but also impact policy decisions. For example, governments appoint women as finance ministers to signal intentions to curb corruption (Armstrong et al. 2022). Therefore, we expect that female police chiefs will be evaluated more favorably regarding corruption reduction than male police chiefs.
Hypothesis 3: Female police chiefs will be perceived as more effective at addressing corruption than male police chiefs.
Similarly, feminine stereotypes cast women as less violent, less aggressive, more caring, and more likely to respect civil rights compared to men (Flores-Macías and Zarkin 2021). While masculine stereotypes assume that men are quicker to use (unjustified) violence, women are perceived as reluctant users of violence, only using it when necessary. For example, when female officers use force, their actions tend to be evaluated less harshly compared to male officers (Pica et al. 2020). However, these feminine stereotypes of decreased violence may be moderated by their role as police officers, which itself transgresses traditional gender norms (Simpson and Croft 2020). Despite questions of whether people see female police as "blue" first, a popular belief that female police will be less aggressive is anecdotally supported by the rise in organizations, media, and scholars that have identified increasing women's participation in the police as a tool to address police brutality. While evidence regarding whether female officers act differently is relatively mixed, 6 the public may perceive that women are less likely to be aggressive and therefore, less likely to use or condone police brutality.
Hypothesis 4: Female police chiefs will be perceived as more effective at addressing police brutality than male police chiefs.
Moreover, women are viewed as more communal than men, leading to expectations that women are more focused on community engagement and well-being (Huddy and Terkildsen 1993a). Gender stereotypes may lead to "softer" forms of policing, such as community engagement and solicitation of community input, to be considered a more feminine task and preferred by female officers (Miller 1999, Morin et al. 2017. Female police chiefs may be perceived as more likely to engage in community outreach due to stereotypes that women are more capable at the "feminine" skills associated with community policing (Miller 1999). Additionally, since women tend to be evaluated as having less experience and authority, the public may assume that women must engage more with community leaders to gain necessary expertise (Huddy and Terkildsen 1993a). Thus, the public will evaluate female police chiefs as more cooperative with the community than male police chiefs.
Hypothesis 5: Female police chiefs will be perceived as more likely to cooperate with community leaders than male police chiefs.
Finally, though there are positive associations between female police chiefs and several policing outcomes, it is unclear whether this will lead to increased overall support for female police chiefs relative to male police chiefs due to the strong stereotypes that link masculinity with security. Given that role congruity theory expects the public to evaluate women in masculine leadership positions more harshly, the public may still be uncomfortable with the inconsistency between feminine stereotypes and a woman as a leader of a highly masculine institution (Eagly and Karau 2002). The public may still prefer male police chiefs overall as they conform with gendered expectations. Note that this relationship may be mediated by scandals or allegations of corruption (Schulz 2004, Armstrong et al. 2022, in which female police chiefs receive higher support because they are perceived to be more trustworthy (see also, Hypotheses 3 and 4).
Hypothesis 6: Female police chiefs will receive lower levels of overall support than male police chiefs.

Survey Experiment Design
To test our theory, we surveyed approximately 2,400 respondents using Lucid, a survey research firm that recruits samples of adults via the Internet, in April 2021. While Lucid provides a convenience sample and our sample is not representative of the U.S. population, the use of convenience samples is common in political science and is widely used in scholarship about policing (Schuck et al. 2021, Barnes and Beaulieu 2019, Boudreau et al. 2022, Davies et al. 2020, Pica et al. 2020, Riccucci et al. 2018, Schwarz and Coppock 2021. Lucid is more representative than student samples and Coppock and McClellan (2019) demonstrate that experimental findings using Lucid samples track well with US national benchmarks. 7 We have rough gender parity in the sample, though the majority of the sample has an associate's degree or above, is Democratic, and is white (see the appendix).
We designed a vignette of a news article on the appointment of a new police chief in a fictional city, seen below, and assigned respondents to one of 12 conditions (in bold). For this paper, we focus on the gender manipulation. Although we also varied the chief's race, the way in which racial dynamics and stereotypes may impact evaluations of a police chief merits and requires a unique theory that is beyond this paper. 8 However, below we explore the intersectional effects of race and gender.

New police chief chosen
By Andrew Lane, The Franklin Star, February 23, 2021 The city of Franklin has appointed a new police chief. Ethan Carlson/Christine Carlson/Kareem Washington/Jada Washington is a twenty-year veteran of the department, having started as a police officer before serving as a sergeant and lieutenant.
Carlson/Washington said, "In my tenure, I will prioritize increased assistance and aid for law enforcement officers injured in the line of duty/increased officer training in deescalation and limited use of force techniques to limit civilian injuries/the safety of Franklin and look forward to serving the department." Franklin has 200,000 residents and according to the Safe Cities Index is roughly average in its crime statistics and has been consistently average for the last five years. Last year, one community member died during a police interaction and 960 community members experienced nonfatal force (i.e. pushing, grabbing, pepper spraying, or officers threatening to use force) during interactions with the police. One police officer died in the line of duty and 20 police officers were injured while on duty. Franklin experienced 774 reports of violent crime, 4,260 reports of property crime, and 88 reports of sexual assault and domestic violence.
The mayor is confident that his/her experience and dedication to the department will serve them well. Chief Carlson/ Washington will begin work as chief at the end of next month.
The design is a 2 × 2 × 3: we manipulate the gender of the candidate (male or female), their race (Black or white), and their priorities (pro-police, reform, or a control condition). We gathered these sample priorities from positions of groups like the National Association of Chiefs of Police. We focus on gender and test the moderating effect of the chief's priorities and race. We then asked questions about the candidates' competency at addressing issues like domestic violence, police brutality, violent crime, and whether they will cooperate with community leaders (full questionnaire in the appendix). 9 We chose the names to signal the candidates' race and gender using pretested names, with names commonly associated with one gender or another and names in which at least 95% of respondents identified the names as one race (more details in appendix). We also include manipulation checks following Aronow et al. (2020): 1977/2452 respondents correctly identified the police chief's gender (about 81%), 1587/2452 correctly identified the police chief's race (about 69%), and 1409/ 2452 correctly identified both the race and gender (about 66%). 10 Our dependent variables are all four-point Likert scales: a rating of how well the police chief will address domestic violence and sexual assault, as well as nongendered crimes like violent crime 11 (Hypotheses 1 and 2). 12 All variables range from 1 (not well at all) to 4 (very well). 13 We next consider the police chiefs' rated competency at addressing corruption, police brutality, and cooperation with community leaders (not well at all to very well) to test Hypotheses 3 through 5. Finally, we ask respondents how much they would support the police chief (not at all to very much) to test Hypothesis 6. Roughly 200 respondents are assigned to each condition and overall, respondents rate the police chiefs highly, with a mean of 3.41 out of 4. Table 1 compares the means for the female and male chiefs, alongside two-sample t-tests comparing those means. 14 In contrast to Hypothesis 1, female police chiefs are not rated as more or less competent at addressing violent crime. We find support for Hypothesis 2, as respondents rated female police chiefs as significantly more competent at addressing domestic violence and sexual assault. Female police chiefs were also evaluated as more capable at addressing corruption and police brutality and more likely to cooperate with community leaders. In contrast to Hypothesis 6, female police chiefs also receive significantly more support than male police chiefs. This may indicate that the positive evaluation of female police chiefs on several issues aggregates to overall greater support, despite role incongruity. These results are consistent with findings that female police improve public evaluations of the police, particularly regarding legitimacy and trustworthiness (in both American and international contexts; Theobald and Haider-Markel 2009, Riccucci et al. 2018, Flores-Macías and Zarkin 2021, Meier 1975, Keiser et al. 2002, Mosher 1982, Meier and Stewart Jr. 1992, Schuck et al. 2021. Table 1 highlights that female chiefs, on most issues, are rated more positively than male chiefs. 15 However, these significant differences are small-about a 0.15 change on a 4-point scale. These effects, though small in magnitude, are substantively important. Given the relative stickiness of public opinion on policing, even relatively small shifts may indicate an important opportunity to alter long-held opinions. Moreover, while the survey design allows the identification of a casual effect, its hypothetical and relatively moderate nature may understate the impact of the appointment of women police chiefs in real life that may receive highly gendered media coverage and may occur during upheaval. Recent research has explored how seismic events like the murder of George Floyd influences public opinion (Reny andNewman 2021, Boudreau et al. 2022), but it is unclear the degree to which these changes in opinion are durable. 16 This is not to suggest these effects are not important, but that any move in public opinion about the police-however small-is substantively interesting and points to the possibility of methods to improve perceptions of police by changing the face of local departments.

Heterogeneous Responses to Treatment
The results demonstrate that female police chiefs received higher evaluations of effectiveness and support. Now, we explore how the impact of police chief gender may differ based on characteristics both of the chief and the respondents. First, prior perspectives on the police may moderate the impact of the police chief's gender. Previous studies have shown that gender, race, ideology, and previous contact with the criminal legal system condition public opinion about the police (Shuman et al. 2022, Reny andNewman 2021). Second, the theory indicates that individuals with more traditional gender views may be more likely to believe that women should not engage in a typically masculine role, such as policing, and may judge them more harshly due to this perceived violation of their social role (Eagly 1987, Eagly andKarau 2002). Below we explore factors that may prime the degree to which the respondent believes in gender stereotypes, is willing to update their attitudes on the police, and their reactions to the chief's identity. 17

Police Chief Priorities and Partisanship
Partisanship moderates how gender impacts public perceptions (Bauer 2020b;a, Dolan 2014, Koch 2000, Schwarz and Coppock 2021. Partisanship not only influences perspectives on policing more generally, but may also moderate the impact of gender in particular on policing evaluations. For example, partisan cues are often particularly important for evaluations of female candidates regarding security issues as the Republican party is associated with a "tough" stance on security (Holman  , so it is likely that gender stereotypes are interacting with both party and the nature of the police chief position. While partisan cues are likely to be less strong with police chiefs since they are commonly appointed, the public may look to other cues to indicate the chief's partisanship or ideology, such as statements about issues like Black Lives Matter or police reform. This may moderate the impact of a police chief's gender on public perceptions. For example, female Democratic candidates suffer from lower support during insecurity compared to female Republican candidates (Holman et al. 2016, Schneider andBos 2016). Similarly, a female police chief who supports Black Lives Matter-and may be assumed to be Democratic-may be perceived differently than a female police chief who supports Blue Lives Matter-and assumed to be Republican. The impact of this soft partisan cuing likely also differs based on which outcome is discussed and whether it is perceived as a "hard" or "soft" task (Holman et al. 2016).
To test this, we varied the priorities of the police chief to echo partisan divides on police behavior. The "reform" treatment emphasizes de-escalation and limited use of force, which reflects Democratic calls for police reform. The "pro-police" treatment aligns with Republican perspectives that emphasize the need to protect the safety of police officers and echoes the Blue Lives Matter movement which has been associated with support for the Republican party (Drakulich et al. 2020). We subset the data to only female chiefs and compare the means of the pro-police and reform priorities in Table 2.
Largely, female chiefs with different priorities are rated similarly on sexual assault, violent crime, corruption, and candidate support. However, the female reform chief is rated as more competent at addressing domestic violence, police brutality, and working with community leaders. This suggests female chiefs that adhere to traditional feminine stereotypes and are "soft" on crime are rewarded with positive evaluations on effectiveness on some policing outcomes. This aligns with role congruity theory that female chiefs emphasizing feminine issues should be evaluated more favorably.
In Table 3, we investigate how responses to female police chiefs vary by respondent party.
Interestingly, there are largely no significant differences by respondent party: Republicans and Democrats are indistinguishable in their support for women police chiefs. This may indicate that despite their varying views on the police and gender roles, Republicans and Democrats both positively evaluate women police chiefs. However, there are interesting differences within party, as detailed in the appendix. While Republican respondents rate the female and male police chief similarly, Democratic respondents consistently rate the female chief as significantly more competent on every main dependent variable. These results point to a difference of gendered approval within and not between party, and suggest that Democratic respondents are more trusting of female police chiefs relative to male chiefs. This comports with existing research on the interaction between gender stereotypes, gender, and party that finds inconsistent results on these relationships: that Republican and Democratic women, for example, face different expectations from voters (Bauer 2015, Sanbonmatsu andDolan 2009). This may be attributable to Republicans representing more traditionally masculine traits compared to Democrats, who voters perceive as more feminine (Winter 2010). Democrats, who tend to be more likely to favor police reform and may be more likely to value feminine traits, may respond more positively to a female police chief. Republican respondents may face conflicting reactions due to a higher likelihood of support for sexist beliefs and support for traditional policing and thus, face more role congruity discontinuity (Cassese andHolman 2019, Reny andNewman 2021). Overall, these findings suggest that gender stereotypes may operate differently within and across party.

Gender and Sexism
While women police chiefs may be evaluated differently than men due to gender stereotypes, the degree to which individuals hold gender stereotypes differs. People who hold more traditional gender views may be more likely to believe that women should not engage in masculine roles, such as policing, and thus, may judge them more harshly. Therefore, characteristics associated with more traditional gendered values-proxied here as sexist beliefs-should limit the positive impact of a woman police chief.
To measure the sexism of respondents, we asked for rated agreement with the following statements (from strongly disagree to strongly agree): women are generally not as smart as men; women are just as capable of thinking logically as men (reverse coded); discrimination against women is no longer a problem in the United States; society has reached the point where women and men have equal opportunities for achievement; and it is easy to understand why women's groups are still concerned about societal limitations of women's opportunities (reverse coded). We sum respondents' answers and create a standardized 0-1 sexism scale (higher values indicate more sexism).
We split the sample into "low sexism" (below 0.35, the median and mean of the sexism scale variable) and "high sexism" (above 0.35). Results, in Table 4, highlight the importance of this variable in predicting evaluations of the female chief. Respondents with high sexism rate the female chief as less competent at addressing domestic violence, sexual assault, and violent crime, and less likely to cooperate with community leaders. Unsurprisingly, these individuals also supported female candidates less. There is no relationship between sexism and competency at addressing corruption and police brutality, however. These results indicate that respondents' sexism significantly moderates their support for a female police chief and supports role congruity theory, as individuals that are more sexist should react more negatively violations of gender roles.
Moreover, men and women may hold different understandings of gender stereotypes and women may also gain greater symbolic benefits from female police chiefs. Women may benefit psychologically from seeing a woman in power and assume she has similar priorities . We next compare male and female respondents who received the female treatment in Table 5. Interestingly, female respondents are no more or less likely to trust the female police chief's competency at handling domestic violence, sexual assault, corruption, community leaders, or overall support. 18 However, women rated female chiefs as more competent at addressing violent crime and police brutality. This is in contrast to our expectations, as women do not appear to trust the female candidate more at addressing gendered crimes but these results do indicate a higher rated competency at some other outcomes less typically designated as "women's issues." This may be the result of men more strongly relying on gender stereotypes regarding gendered crimes, while women may have a more nuanced understanding as they are the primary victims and relatively more likely to have previously encountered police responses to these crimes. These results paint a complicated picture of how women (and men) differ in their evaluations of female police chiefs: further research ought to explore these differences.

Intersectionality
Race is an important confounder in determining perceptions of law enforcement (Fine et al. 2019). Moreover, race is not independent of gender. Are Black women perceived differently than their white female counterparts? This follows theoretical and empirical evidence that women as a group are not monoliths and must be considered separately based on race (Brown 2014, Reingold et al. 2020). On one hand, Black police officers increase perceptions of legitimacy among Black citizens (Cochran and Warren 2012, Riccucci et al. 2018, Theobald and Haider-Markel 2009, Davies et al. 2020. Thus, Black women may also be evaluated favorably. On the other hand, Black women may be "doubly bound" as raceand sex-based discrimination intersect and may face less support, but may also be able to appeal to a broader support base (Clayton and Stallings 2000). Further, stereotypes surrounding women may differ based on race. For example, Donovan (2011) argues that although white women may be perceived as communal, affective, and sensitive, stereotypes about Black women often emphasize other traits, such as strong and domineering. Many of the stereotypes theorized to increase support for women candidates may be intertwined with race. Therefore, both the gender and race of police chiefs may intersect to impact public evaluations of their effectiveness, a consideration that we test in Table 6. Largely, respondents rate white and Black female police chiefs similarly, though the Black female chief is consistently rated lower. These differences reach statistical significance with sexual assault and police brutality. The rating of white women as more effective than Black women may reflect that the feminine stereotypes applied to women differ by race (Donovan 2011). Similar to Black women's increased experience of discrimination and the often negative portrayal of Black female survivors of gendered violence, Black women police chiefs may also face greater scrutiny due to intersecting sources Table 5. Comparison of means of rated support of the female police chiefs by respondent gender and results from a series of twosample t-tests.

Variable
Female In the appendix, we also investigate how the race of the respondents influence ratings. White respondents consistently rate the female chief as more competent than nonwhite respondents. This comports with research that finds a general distrust of police within the Black community and interestingly, one that is not mitigated by police chief gender (Brunson andGau 2015, Chandek 1999).

Criminal Justice Contact
Finally, opinions of the police are not independent of previous contact with police. Previous direct or indirect criminal justice contact can be politically demobilizing (White 2019, Weaver and Lerman 2010, Burch 2014. Not only may this worsen attitudes toward the police, but it may also de-sensitize respondents to the treatment as the respondent may be wary that any reform or change will have an impact on police behavior. Here, we split the sample into two categories in Table 7: those that listed a "punitive" contact with the police (been stopped, searched, or arrested) and those that listed no such experience. 19 Respondents with punitive contact consistently rated the female police chief as less competent at addressing most issues relative to people with low contact: domestic violence, sexual assault, violent crime, and police brutality. 20 However, punitive contact does not influence ratings of addressing corruption, working with community leaders, or overall support. In the appendix, we also look at the same comparison within the male police chief treatment, and results are similar. That is, punitive contact with the police drives down support of police chiefs regardless of gender. Though this analysis is a first cut at this phenomenon, it is suggestive of other findings that criminal justice contact may have a nuanced effect on political participation or public perceptions of political leaders (Walker 2020).

Discussion
As political institutions become increasingly diverse, many wonder how this impacts policy outcomes and the public's trust of the government. Although women remain under-represented within police leadership, symbolic representation suggests that women may have a palpable impact on public perceptions of the police. Based on gender stereotypes that cast women as less violent, less corrupt, more community-oriented, and more concerned about gendered crimes, female police chiefs may be viewed more favorably regarding their ability to curb harmful police behavior, increase community cooperation, and improve responses to gender-based violence. Yet, due to the challenge women police chiefs pose to traditional gender roles, these same stereotypes may also lead women police chiefs to be evaluated more harshly regarding their ability to address violent crime and their overall level of support.
Our survey experiment aimed to excavate patterns in public perceptions of police chiefs by the chief's gender. We find that female police chiefs are considered more competent at addressing gendered crimes (with little relationship with non-gendered crimes), corruption, police brutality, and community relations. We also find higher levels of support for the female chief, in contrast to our expectations. We also explore how these evaluations of female police chiefs may differ by other characteristics. While the overall findings are largely independent of respondent gender and race, race and priorities of the police chief does have some heterogeneous impacts. Moreover, respondent sexism, previous criminal justice contact, and to some extent, partisanship, also moderated the treatment effect. These findings suggest that gender dynamics of police leadership is an important foil in perceptions of police efficacy and trustworthiness.
Though this paper provides an examination of how gender influences approval of police chiefs, it is subject to limitations. We structured the vignette as a hypothetical news story about a police chief, but citizens may not often see stories about their local police chief. Do they pay attention to their local police leader? Future work should connect more explicitly the presence of these police chiefs with actual policing outcomes and how citizens in specific localities respond to their police chief. Moreover, we deliberately structured the vignette as a neutral news story about a chief, but as the Louisville experience after the killing of Breonna Taylor illustrates, diverse police chiefs often come into power in the aftermath of scandal or unrest and gender stereotypes are often explicitly invoked both by the chief themselves and by others, such as the media. How might those circumstances alter approval of the police? Similarly, our survey sample is not representative of the general population and thus, future studies may want to explore the results' generalizability, especially among groups that may be under-represented in convenience samples. Future work should explore further the implications and additional interactions that may exist. Namely, how does race interact with and affect perceptions separately from gender? We explored an intersectional effect, but more research should excavate differences within race. Moreover, does the public simply consider all police chiefs to behave similarly even if we explicitly vary their priorities? As policing and debates around policing have become increasingly politicized, other forms of partisan cuing may be more important regarding public reactions to a police chief's gender. While this survey primarily explored the impact of police chief sex, additional studies should delve deeper into other gendered aspects, including relative masculinities and femininities of police chiefs and police departments, rather than binary sex. Finally, while we examine public perceptions of the police chief as an individual, future studies should explore whether there are similar effects for entire police departments or other political figures. Our survey provides a starting point for others interested in police leadership and approval, but more can be done to mirror the gender dynamics of the public and their local police.
Overall, this study adds important context to other work that finds that demographic representation within the police improves perceptions of police legitimacy, trustworthiness, and effectiveness (Flores-Macías and Zarkin 2021, Van Ryzin et al. 2017, O'Brien 2018, Cochran andWarren 2012). After several high-profile incidences of police violence that sparked and sustained the Black Lives Matter movement, along with other movements highlighting gaps in justice and security for other marginalized groups, such as the #MeToo Movement, scholars, policymakers, and advocates called for increased diversification of police forces. 21 With public confidence in the police reaching an all-time low in 2020 with only 48% of the public holding a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in the police, it becomes more important than ever to consider the circumstances under which the public becomes more supportive of police and, as an extension, how that translates into substantive policy reforms. Diversification of police leadership may alter public attitudes toward the police. 22 As one scholar laments about female police, "The public expects many of them to … reform departments with poor public images … they're supposed to be the healers. It's a terrible burden." 23 Our findings illustrate that though improving representation in police leadership may improve perceptions of some policing activities, it is not enough to alter perceptions of all policing responsibilities and across all members of the public. Diversity within police leadership may be a necessary but not sufficient condition to repair trust between police and the communities they monitor.

Author's Note
Many thanks to Nichole Bauer, Sabrina Karim, Katie Searles, and Jennie Sweet-Cushman for helpful feedback on the paper and survey design. Data, replication code, and appendix materials are available on the Political Research Quarterly website.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding
This project was generously funded by an American Political Science Association Centennial Center Research Grant.

Supplemental Material
Supplemental material for this article is available online.

ORCID iD
Anna Gunderson  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6744-9588 Notes 1. As quoted in "Black woman to lead Louisville, Ky., police amid Breonna Taylor shooting fallout." Associated PressSeptember 8, 2020. https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-09-08/ black-woman-lead-louisville-police-force-breonna-taylor.] 2. Gender is the socially constructed roles, behaviors, and attributes considered appropriate for women and men (Butler 2011). While our experiment varies biological sex, the theory focuses on the gendered expectations of how female police chiefs will act based on social norms. 3. We primarily examine the chief's gender. We explore intersectional effects, but a theory of the impact of race as a whole is beyond the scope of what could be addressed in this study. 4. However, Schuck et al. (2021) found that this relationship was limited to underperforming units. 5. Police chiefs are not purely window dressing as they shape departmental priorities (Farris and Holman 2015). 6. See Rabe-Hemp (2008), Sun (2007), Schuck and Rabe-Hemp (2005), Ba et al. (2021), Shoub et al. (2021), Poteyeva and Sun (2009), Gunderson and Huber (2022). 7. As we randomize our treatment within our sample (see the appendix), our results estimate sample average treatment effects, which have strong internal validity if the standard experimental assumptions are met (Coppock and McClellan 2019). We don't expect our theory applies significantly differently to our sample than it would to the US population. Moreover, as our study primarily tests the relationship between variables, convenience samples are accepted (Baker et al. 2013). 8. To ensure a full discussion of race, we examine the impact of race in a separate paper. 9. We include specifications with all outcomes in the appendix. 10. See the appendix for the results with the sub-sample who passed the manipulation check. 11. In the survey, we do not define violent crime explicitly, so it is possible respondents are thinking of sexual assault, for example, when we ask about violent crime. Though we believe that this is likely not the case because of differential effects for those two variables, it is possible and future studies should explore this possibility. 12. See the appendix for a specification with property crime.
Survey respondents rated female police chiefs as more competent at addressing property crime, which could be driven by perceptions that these chiefs may be better at addressing "soft" crimes. 13. Based on a typical Likert scale, however, the option "neutral" was removed to avoid vagueness and ensure respondents took a clear stance. We removed this option following the norms of surveys like the Cooperative Election Study (CCES) and the Pew Research Center (https://www.pewresearch.org/methods/2019/05/09/whenonline-survey-respondents-only) and findings that the forced option prompts deeper processing of the questions (Smyth et al. 2006). 14. See the appendix for regression estimates. They are consistent with t-test results. 15. If we use a Bonferroni correction to adjust for the number of tests we run here (7), all the main results stay significant save for the police brutality and community leaders variables. 16. See https://news.gallup.com/poll/352304/black-confidencepolice-recovers-2020-low.aspx. 17. It is important to note that all variables used to explore heterogeneous responses were asked post-treatment. This was done to avoid priming the respondent, especially regarding questions related to sexism, gender, political priorities, and police experiences. However, this means that we cannot make strong causal claims about heterogeneous effects and thus, we below are exploring patterns in the results, but urge further research to more carefully examine differences in the treatment effect across groups. 18. The rated means of the male police chief treatment are similarly insignificant. 19. In the full sample, 649 respondents indicated they had at least one of those experiences and 835 listed none. 20. In the appendix, we examine the respondent's self-reported safety rating of their neighborhood and their rating of how the experience with the police was (positive or negative