Gendered punishment? How the corruption of female politicians affects public opinion of female political leadership

Abstract

Does the corruption of a woman politician decrease public support for other women political leaders? To answer this question, this article examines how the impeachment of Park Geun-hye, the first female president of South Korea, affects people’s perceptions of women’s political leadership in South Korea. We argue that in South Korea, the high-level political corruption scandal of the first woman president led to lower evaluations of women’s political leadership because of the intense and gendered media coverage of Park’s failure. Using the two waves of the World Values Survey conducted in South Korea before and after Park Geun-hye’s impeachment in 2017, we show that Park’s impeachment negatively affects people’s views of female political leaders. This negative effect is conditioned by party identification. Our work suggests that the effects of gendered evaluations of leaders’ corruption can extend beyond the evaluation of the leaders themselves, thus affecting women’s representation more generally.