Published In

Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

11-8-2022

Subjects

Politics and government, Women -- Political activity

Abstract

Governments promote gender-sensitive policies, yet little is known about why reform campaigns evoke backlash. Drawing on social position theory, we test whether marginalized (women’s organizations) or intrusive (Western donors) messengers cause resistance across public rights (quotas) and private rights (land reform). Using a framing experiment implemented among 1,704 Malawians, we find that females’ attitudes are unaffected by campaigns, while backlash occurs among patrilineal and matrilineal males. Backlash among men is more common for sensitive private rights (land reform) than public rights (quotas) and Western donors than women’s organizations, suggesting complex effects generally more consistent with the intrusiveness hypothesis.

Rights

#The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons AttributionNonCommercial-NoDerivs licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits noncommercial reproduction and distribution of the work, in any medium, provided the original work is not altered or transformed in any way, and that the work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact journals.permissions@oup.com

Description

Includes: Attitudes toward Public and Private Rights among Malawians (LGPI)

DOI

10.1093/sp/jxac037

Persistent Identifier

https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/38801

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