The Contemporary Landscape of Gendered Personality Traits

Associations that individuals make between a personality trait and its level of assumed masculinity or femininity are a prominent thread across the gender and politics literature. Yet, whether an attribute is categorized by scholars as “masculine” or “feminine” continues to be determined by studies that are decades old, and which often initially rested on scholarly assumptions rather than testing. Inaccurate assumptions may drive incorrect conclusions about the ways in which gendered associations influence voter and party decision-making, and contribute to ongoing gender bias in leadership evaluations. We use an original survey of 26 commonly-cited character traits associated with leadership, sampling 1,417 respondents in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America. We find evidence that scholarly categorization of the gendered associations diverges from how respondents rated many of those traits, and offer a modified list of gender-associated traits for researchers.