A Woman’s Place: Geographic Context and Political Engagement in the #Metoo Era

Following major sexual harassment allegations made against high-profile figures in the fall of 2017, sexual harassment became a salient topic in the political environment: thousands of protests against sexual harassment and violence occurred throughout the U.S, state legislatures introduced various pieces of legislation to address sexual harassment, and elites and citizens started to sort on the issue in a partisan fashion across the country. This #MeToo movement galvanized citizens on a large scale, and news coverage framed this movement in a national or international context. Building upon existing studies on state and local politics, gender attitudes, and sexual harassment, I argue that state- and local-level characteristics have major implications for #MeToo-related engagement. The sociopolitical characteristics of states (and when it comes to protest activity, locales) should affect the likelihood of political engagement with #MeToo. Across three different studies, I analyze how geographic context shapes #MeToo protests, state legislation addressing harassment within the legislature, and citizens’ judgments of political elites accused of harassment, respectively. I find that local context significantly affects #MeToo protest incident rates, while progressive state context positively affects bill introductions addressing harassment within the legislature. While there is some support for interstate variation in individual judgments to elites, most state context attributes are not significant in explaining such judgments.