RESEARCH ARTICLE The Perks of Being Female: Gender Stereotypes and Voters’ Preferences in Brazil Natalia Lucciola Secretary of Education, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Corresponding author. Email: nat.lucciola@gmail.com (Received 09 February 2021; revised 14 January 2022; accepted 18 February 2022) Abstract Do voters rely on gendered stereotypes when evaluating candidates in Brazil? The literature shows that gendered stereotypes about politicians can result in women being consistently judged as unfit for office. This article investigates the influence of gendered stereotypes on voters’ preferences in a context that combines severe female under- representation and incentives for voters to rely on politicians’ personal attributes. In two survey experiments, I identify the gendered stereotypes of politicians in Brazil and estimate how they influence voters’ behavior toward hypothetical candidates who do or do not comply with those stereotypes. The findings suggest that voters hold positive stereotypes of women and a broad pro-female bias. Keywords: gender; women; female politicians; Brazil; survey experiment; voter behavior; stereotype; role congruence theory Do voters hold gendered expectations about politicians that affect female representation in Brazil? Theories about the contents of gendered stereotypes and their application to candidate evaluations suggest that context matters. In a highly personalized political system in which women remain outsiders, what are voters’ expectations about the profile of a female politician, and to what extent do these stereotypical predictions create gendered bias in voters’ preferences? This article uses two survey experiments in Brazil to investigate how context influences the contents of gendered stereotypes of politicians and whether complying with the stereotypical profile affects voters’ evaluations of hypothet- ical candidates. Brazil every day seems further from being a political leader in the world, but when it comes to female underrepresentation, it remains a front-runner. Some- how, a country where women account for no more than 15% of elected repre- sentatives managed to elect its first (and so far, only) female president, Dilma © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Women, Gender, and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association. Politics & Gender (2023), 19: 2, 507–532 doi:10.1017/S1743923X22000113 https://doi.org/10.1017/S1743923X22000113 Published online by Cambridge University Press