Women continue to be underrepresented in political office, although on average they hold higher academic degrees and graduate from college in greater numbers when compared to men. Gender role stereotypes have been found to affect how individuals view women as leaders, and the present study examines the role these stereotypes play in this underrepresentation. Specifically it investigated the influence of gender schemas on participants' (1) retention of political platforms and candidate qualifications based on their congruence with male or female stereotypes and (2) evaluations of the candidates on competence, likeability, and desirability for office. How sexist attitudes moderate this effect was also examined.

Participants (138; 70.6% women) were shown a video of a male and female candidate for the House of Representatives presenting their qualifications and political positions on four issues each, two of which represented stereotypically masculine ("hard") topics and two feminine ("soft") topics. The videos were counterbalanced for order, for masculine or feminine topics, and for the political ideology. Retention of material was measured by having candidates match positions presented to the appropriate candidate. Participants were also asked to evaluate both candidates on their perceived competence, likeability, and desirability for the political office and were administered a sexism scale.

Findings indicated that women accurately retained equal amounts of information about the male and female candidates, whereas men recalled significantly more about the male candidate than the female candidate. Both men and women attributed more of the hard political issues to the male candidate and the soft political issues to the female candidate. The female candidate was evaluated as more competent, liked, and desired for the office than the male candidate, particularly by participants who scored low on sexism.

The contradiction that men accurately recalled more of the male candidate's message while evaluating the female more highly highlights the importance of using both implicit and explicit measures to capture gender stereotyping. Social desirability may influence our conscious choices, while implicit measures tend to capture more unconscious phenomena.