Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: The global COVID-19 pandemic has changed how elected officials govern, campaign, and present themselves. One key change is that politicians across the world often wear face masks when in public. To what extent does this practice influence how the public perceives politicians? We investigate this question in Japan, a country where people – though not politicians – often wore face masks even before the novel coronavirus outbreak. Conducting a survey experiment with a nationally representative sample of about $1500$ Japanese residents, we find that masks do influence public perceptions and that women politicians lose more public support when wearing masks than men. Given the nature of political campaigns in the COVID-19 world, we think that our results have broad implications for women politicians competitiveness, specifically, and for politics and gender, more generally. We outline these in the conclusion along with several new research directions.
Authors: Kiho Muroga, Charles Crabtree
Institutions: Kyushu University, Dartmouth College
Language: English
Subfield: Gender Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $3,550
OpenAlex ID: W7118707153