Proceedings of the Global Conference on Gender Studies
Year: 2024
DOI:
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Assessing Village People’s Preferences of Gender-Stereotypic Candidates for Village Development Program Committees: The Case of Rural Sri Lanka
Niranjala Hulugalla, Mai Seki1, Makoto Kakinaka, Kyohei Yamada
ABSTRACT:
Numerous studies indicate that communal, democratic, and liberal traits—typically associated with femininity—are perceived as more suitable for leadership compared to agentic, autocratic, and conservative traits, which are generally associated with masculinity. Despite this perception, women remain underrepresented in leadership roles within community-based programs, the Village Development Programs (VDPs), in rural Sri Lanka. This paradox—preference for female stereotypes but male leaders—raises questions about the true influence of gender-stereotypical beliefs and inherent gender biases in leader selection. This study examines village people’s preferences for selecting leaders in rural Sri Lanka, focusing on how a leader’s gender and gender-stereotypical beliefs influence the choice of a chairperson for the VDPs. We conducted a conjoint experiment with 1,147 randomly selected village residents from the Kalutara district, Sri Lanka, analyzing five attributes of potential leaders: gender, leadership trait (agentic or communal), leadership type (autocratic or democratic), leader’s priority area (finance, infrastructure, education, or healthcare), and leader’s ideology on gender (conservative or liberal). The results indicate that village people prefer male leaders over female ones, despite favoring candidates with democratic styles and liberal gender views, which are often recognized as feminine features. This suggests the presence of inherent gender biases—deeply rooted prejudices based solely on gender—emphasizing the need for targeted interventions to address these biases and promote inclusive leadership within rural communities.
keywords: Gender stereotypes; Leadership; Rural Development; Sri Lanka; Conjoint experiment