Women reporters as experts on security affairs in Jordan? Rethinking gender and issue competency stereotypes

ABSTRACT

Research on gender and issue competency stereotypes frequently deems security affairs a “stereotypically masculine” domain. Traditionally, men are seen as more credible authorities in arenas such as crime and the military, while women are assumed to be more credible in “stereotypically feminine” ones like childcare and health. But women’s roles in politics, media, and other influential sectors are rapidly changing in the Mediterranean and MENA region. To test the conventional wisdom, we conducted an original, nationally representative survey in Jordan (n=885) focused on the media sector, using an embedded experiment assessing beliefs about the suitability of men versus women to report and offer commentary on national security affairs—specifically, an internal security threat (a high-profile bank robbery). Strong patriarchal norms suggest that the country should be an “easy case” for theories positing bias against women as experts in stereotypically masculine issue areas. Our results, however, do not support this conventional wisdom, instead suggesting egalitarianism and even a modest credibility advantage for women on assumptions about expertise. Theoretically, we contribute by proposing three novel explanations for why and when women in patriarchal contexts may evade classic sexist backlash, and perhaps achieve greater credibility than men, as authorities in traditionally masculine domains.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender
• national security
• MENA
• Mediterranean
• surveys

Acknowledgment

Support for this research was provided by a grant (NPRP 7-1757-5-261) from the Qatar National Research Fund (a member of Qatar Foundation). The authors thank this institution for its support and note that all statements made herein are solely the authors’ responsibility. The authors thank Everette Dennis, Justin Martin, Robb Wood, and Marium Saeed for including our vignette experiment in the 2017 Media Use in the Middle East survey, and Kerry Hill for her polling operations expertise and kind guidance. For letting us pick their brains, the authors also thank Russell Lucas, Sean Yom, Shibley Telhami, Annelle Sheline, and participants at the Comparative Politics Workshop at the University of Maryland. The authors also thank the Mediterranean Politics editorial team, in particular Matt Buehler and Frederic Volpi, and the anonymous reviewers for excellent feedback that helped strengthen this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. While Benstead and Lust (2018) also investigate gender and issue competency stereotypes in Jordan, they focus on a different issue area (corruption) and their sampling method was purposive (over-representing rural areas) rather than nationally representative (see p. 91 in Benstead & Lust, 2018). We build on their approach and engage with their findings.

2. On women’s political empowerment, according to the 2020 Global Gender Gap Index, Jordan ranked 113 out of 153 countries (World Economic Forum, 2020). Data from the World Values Survey (WVS-7, 2017–2020) suggest that only 18 per cent of Jordanians believe women are as good as men at political leadership (Benstead, 2020). A 2017 European Union report on gender equality in the Mediterranean further suggests that only 63 per cent of Jordanians believe that women should have equal rights with men (Sidlo et al., 2017).

3. See http://www.mideastmedia.org/survey/2017/chapter/news-consumption/#s218.

4. For example, Leeper (1991) found that a woman running in a hypothetical governor race was viewed as more credible than the man on stereotypically feminine issues (e.g., ‘improving education’), consistent with gender and issue competency stereotypes, but differences in credibility ratings were not statistically significant for stereotypically masculine issue areas (e.g., ‘dealing with crime’). Some research finds that women political candidates are disadvantaged only when campaigns explicitly activate certain stereotypes, such as women’s suitability for parenthood (Bauer, 2015). Recent findings from Tunisia (Blackman & Jackson, 2021) highlight bias against women candidates among patriarchal respondents, yet also suggest that women political candidates who run on stereotypically masculine issue platforms, specifically security affairs, can increase their voter support among both egalitarian and patriarchal respondents.

5. Clark and Schwedler (2003, p. 302) observe that greater participation by women in Jordan’s Islamic Action Front reflected ‘efforts of party leaders to ghettoize women’s activities rather than envision meaningful gender equality within the party.’

6. See Appendix B. The wording was as follows: ‘Suppose you’re watching the news. A journalist is covering a news story about a national security threat. The news story is about a recent bank robbery. [He/She] provides [his/her] overview of the situation and [his/her] recommendations for increasing the security of the country.’

7. The wording for each item was as follows: ‘I expect he/she does not know very much about this issue’ (expertise, reverse-scored), ‘I expect he/she in reporting about this issue in a truthful, unbiased way’ (trustworthiness), and ‘I expect he/she cares strongly about this issue’ (cares). Reponses to each item were measured on a Likert scale, from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree.

8. While the three measures are correlated in the data (Appendix F), they tap differing dimensions of credibility and are distinct theoretically, as noted.

9. The study obtained IRB approval from Georgetown University in Qatar.

10. The strategic use of feminism extends to non-state actors, such as Islamist political parties, which gain political value by promoting women politicians, especially in the presence of gender quotas. See, for example: Clark and Schwedler (2003), Benstead et al. (2015), Ben Shitrit (2016), Bush and Gao (2017), and Kao and Benstead (2021).

11. Bush (2015).

12. Indeed, in response to COVID-19, US national security professionals publicly advocated greater attention to health (e.g., Boot, 2020).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a grant (NPRP 7-1757-5-261) from the Qatar National Research Fund (a member of Qatar Foundation).