Beauty and Cabinet Nomination: Is There a Gender Bias?

• Main Author: Uzun, Mara
• Other Authors: Stockemer, Daniel
• Language: en
• Published: Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa 2014
• Subjects: ministerial nomination; cabinet selection; physical attractiveness; gender
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10393/31542; http://dx.doi.org/10.20381/ruor-6654

In this thesis, I aim to answer the following questions: (1) is there a relationship between the gender of the nominator and the beauty of the ministers that he or she selected, and (2) do nominators select more attractive ministers of the opposite sex. I compare and contrast the physical beauty of ministers of three cabinets nominated by a male prime minister and three cabinets nominated by a female prime minister. My descriptive statistics and multivariate regression analysis, in which I control for the age of the nominator, the physical attractiveness of the nominator, the professional experience of the nominator, the age of the minister and the margin of victory of the nominator`s party, reveal interesting results. I find that both male and female prime ministers nominate better-looking women, and that this tendency is even stronger and slightly more pronounced for female nominators than it is for male nominators.