| Summary: | W
ho gets to “speak up” in politics? Whose voices are silenced? We conducted two
field experiments to understand how harassment shapes the everyday experiences
of politics for men and women in the US today. We randomized the names
campaign volunteers used to text supporters reminders to participate in a protest and call
their representatives. We find that female-named volunteers receive more offensive, silencing,
and withdrawal responses than male-named or ambiguously-named volunteers. However,
supporters were also more likely to respond and agree to their asks. These findings help make
sense of prior research that finds women are less likely than men to participate in politics,
and raise new questions about whether individual women may be perceived as symbolic
representatives of women as a group. We conclude by discussing the implications for gender
equality and political activism.
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