Abstract
Scholarship on political representation shows persistent inequality between women and men. Recent work theorizes that children internalize norms of gendered inequality to affect their images of the prototypical political leader and interest in politics. We ask, in contexts where men hold most of the seats in the legislature, how do children view political leadership? We hypothesize that children perceive men as default political leaders, that girls are less interested in being elected leaders than boys, and that the gender gap in political ambition grows as children age. To test our hypotheses, we surveyed 981 children ages 5-16 in Nigeria. We find that when asked to imagine and draw a political leader, approximately 90 percent of children drew a man and less than six percent of children drew a woman. We arrive at mixed evidence for a gender gap in political ambition, and we do not find that the gender gap in aspiration widens as children grow older. Our study offers insights into the gendered political socialization of children in countries where women are largely excluded from political leadership.