Title: With Liberty and Sexism for All: Perceived Identity Conflict and the 2016 Presidential Election

Women are highly underrepresented at elite leadership positions, including politics (Pew, 2015). Drawing on research on role incongruity, stereotypes and identity management, we develop a new measure, Perceived Identity Conflict (PIC) to assesses the perceived level of conflict Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump psychologically experience in managing their gender and leadership identities. Using this measure, we found that increased PIC is related to negative leadership perceptions for Hillary Clinton (Study 1). However, this relationship was significantly stronger for perceptions of Hillary Clinton than perceptions of Donald Trump. This was true controlling for perceivers’ political orientation, gender, and other demographic variables (Study 2 & 3). Our studies suggest that Clinton was more disadvantaged by PIC than was Trump. Higher levels of PIC may make salient stereotypes of women as unfit for leadership.