We are grateful to Michelle Taylor‐Robinson, Karen Rasler, Mirya Holman, Amanda Bittner, Saladin Ambar, Genevieve Kehoe, Rikhil Bhavnani, Christian Welzel, Ferdinand Müller‐Rommel, participants of the World Politics Speaker Series at Indiana University, participants of the Center for the Study of Democracy Speaker Series at Leuphana University, Editor William Jacoby, and three anonymous reviewers for invaluable feedback on this research. We owe a special thanks to Martin Christensen, Silvia Claveria Alias, and Ingrid Bego for sharing data on cabinet ministers. We thank Theresa Schroeder for her contributions to the data collection and theoretical development during the early stages of this project. These efforts, and early conversations with her, informed subsequent data collection and were beneficial to the development of several hypotheses. We would also like to thank Kayo Onishi, Jessica Wysocky, and Greg Saxton for excellent research assistance. Earlier versions of this work were presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, and the European Conference on Politics and Gender.