Emily Andersen

Period 7

Political Science Project 1

I have recently performed a social/political experiment with a small group
of students at Bingham High School. Our goal for the experiment was to try to
determine if the gender of a candidate for the U.S. senate would change
peoples reaction to that candidate. My group handed out surveys for a female
candidate and then compared our results with those of a group who had handed
out surveys for a male candidate that had all of the exact same credentials as
ours did. The hypothesis that our group decided on before the experiment was
that more people would answer favorably towards the man because a man being
elected is traditional and more like what has been done in the past. This
hypothesis is understandable because of the society we live in and the fact that
it is predominantly Mormon and Republican. Most Mormons believe that women
should stay at home with their children and because of this the people here tend
to be extremely conservative towards the gender of the people that are elected
to political positions. Though I agreed with this hypothesis, I also personally had
a theory that people, or at least women, might answer more favorably towards
the female candidate because there has been a strong push recently for equal
rights for women. Even within the Mormon Church many things have happened
in regards to equality and womens rights. A lot of people are very excited
whenever they see a woman succeed because it is a way of proving to the rest
of the world that our country is not full of sexist people. This is why I thought that

it could be possible that the fact that she is a woman might influence the
opinions of the voters in the exact opposite direction than what my group
predicted.
The survey asked some basic information about the persons religion, age,
and gender, and then had five statements and asked them to mark strongly
agree, agree, neutral, disagree, or strongly disagree. The first asked if
she had sufficient education and all of the answers except for one were neutral
or above for both the male and female candidate. This sameness in the answers
shows that no one thought a male would need more education than a female to
be a U.S. senator, and vice versa. The second question was about work
experience and also had only one person put disagree. It should be noted that
the disagree for this one was in the male, and the disagree for the other one was
in the female. So neither so far is being judged against more than the other.
Since these answers were also very similar, it shows that most people dont
think a either a woman or a man needs more work experience than the other.
The third question about leadership skills was more diverse, with two disagrees,
both for the female candidate. This shows that less people believe a woman has
strong leadership skills than a man. There were two disagrees for the man on
the next question about the life experience she had and if it will help her
understand average Utahans., so while people are less inclined to admit a
woman has leadership skills, they are more inclined to admit that a woman can
understand others. This is a very classic and conservative description about the
differences between men and women, so it makes a lot of sense in the

community that these surveys were taken in. The last question had answers all
over the place for both candidates because it asked if they agreed with more of
the candidates policies than they opposed. The beliefs that were listed for the
candidates were specifically varied to fit the beliefs of both liberals and
conservatives, so everyone would find things they liked and things they didnt. It
makes sense then that there were a lot of different answers because everyone
has different opinions to reconcile with the candidates.
Based on our overall results, my hypothesis was proven to be more
correct than the original hypothesis of the group. The numbers show that more
people answered in favor of the female. On average each person marked about
4.6 agrees or strongly agrees for the female, and about 2.3 for the male. This
shows that more people were willing to vote for a woman than for a man. I know
that I asked a lot more females than males, and most of the others in the group
had a few more females than males, too. This would prove my idea that girls are
more willing to vote for a girl than for a boy, but it does not necessarily prove
that men are more willing to vote for a girl, since not as many men were asked.
If there had been more men asked than women, the answers might have been
swayed the other way, or they still might have been similar. There are reasons
that either could happen, so we dont really know. Either way, the information
that we do have is pretty solid proof that at least women are more likely to vote
for women.
Of course, this conclusion, while logical when analyzed from the
information that was gathered, may or may not be completely true. Our numbers

arent necessarily the best way to prove any theory because there were many
factors in this experiment that there should not have been. This wasnt the most
professional of operations since it was conducted by students. Im pretty sure
some of the people in my group just handed the surveys out to their parents and
neighbors. For those people that were randomly asked to take the survey, there
could have been a skew in their answers because they did not want to take the
survey in the first place. They may have faked reading the information or just
skimmed it and marked random boxes. Most people do not like being stopped
while they are out and about, and they especially do not like being asked about
politics. With this knowledge we can guess that not everyone put as much
thought into these surveys as they should have, and that could cause a
difference in the answers. Its almost impossible to fix this problem, however,
because it depends on the people.
I also think the results would have been able to give us more accurate
information if the experiment had been performed on a much larger scale. Since
only a few people were asked and they were mostly from the same background
the results could have been a little skewed. If we could have made sure that we
got a group of people from all different walks of life we might have been able to
see more about whether or not where they came from or who they are affected
their opinions towards women. In order to do that we would have to have had a
much larger sample group. We can try to guess how much their background
affected their answers based on the information that we have, but any bias from
someone of a specific religion or age could just be the bias of that particular

person. If we had a lot of people of the same religion and age we could see if
the bias was normal among all of them.
Some people in my group were saying that we might get more poignant or
different results if we put the two candidates side by side and asked people
which one they would vote for, but I dont think that would work very well. If the
only difference between the two candidates was gender people would probably
figure out that it was a test of sexism. Most people dont want others to think that
they are sexist, so they would say that both candidates are the same, to avoid
judgement. It might be interesting to do a test like that and also one like the one
that we did to see the difference. We could compare the results of each to see
how much more biased against the woman people will be when they dont know
that they are being quizzed on their sexism. This would be a really interesting
experiment because it could give us an idea of how sexist people are, but it
would also show us how sexist people think they are, or how sexist they want
others to think they are. This would be intriguing because it would give us insight
into a few different facets of the subject.
Overall, I believe this experiment was a success. There were a lot of little
flaws, but we were able to learn a fair amount about the opinions of the people
in our community area. It seems that even though people uphold the
conservative image of a leading man and a compassionate woman, a lot of
people still have a pretty strong bias in favor of women. Its interesting because
one might guess that a group who wants a woman to stay at home to be a good
wife and mother would not vote for a woman, but it is exactly the opposite. There

could be a number of reasons for this bias, but I think that the biggest one is
probably the amount of stress that we put on sexism in todays society. People
are so focused on not being sexist and not discriminating women, that we are
almost giving women more benefits than men. I think we can see this in the
ballots often, because it is not uncommon for people to vote for a woman
because she is a woman. We can also see examples of this kind of bias in
things like colleges, scholarships, and careers. Women are given higher priority
for these kinds of things. A boy in one of my classes mentioned today that there
are no scholarships out there for white males. This does not really seem fair.
Our society has turned a blind eye to the discrimination against men because
they are so focused on not discriminating against women. Is it fair to give a girl a
job over a boy because of her gender? Is it fair to put a woman in a political
office because she is a female? It doesnt really seem like it is. I think if we are
going to push so hard for equality, we should make sure its equal. We love
empowering women, there is plenty of evidence of this, but we should remember
that men can have just as hard of a time doing something worthwhile. They
might even have it harder, because they dont get the scholarships and
opportunities that women do.