This paper examines to what extent public evaluations of female candidates accord with traditional views about which areas of governance are appropriate for women in the conservative Arab Gulf country of Qatar, where little is known about support for women in politics. It uses gender role congruity theory to assess whether public sentiment relegates women to so called “women’s affairs” such as education and health but downgrades their ability to make contributions in more masculine areas such as economics. Furthermore, the paper uses status discontent theory to examine the divergent views of men and women in the public with respect to female candidates. Status discontent theory posits that as women become more empowered, men will hold to traditional values because their position in society is threatened. Accordingly, men are more likely to prefer that female candidates keep to “women’s affairs” as elected officials. Additionally, this paper considers the role of the female candidates in promoting Islamic values within the local government. While conservative Islamic gender norms have been associated with decreased freedom and political participation it is unclear how this will translate into public opinions. Thus, the analysis probes public views on whether religious promotion should be considered part of women’s affairs in governance. The paper use data from a nationally-representative pre-election survey of adult Qatari citizens fielded just prior to the 2015 municipal council elections. The survey included a conjoint experiment where respondents evaluated hypothetical candidates for the council. The candidate profiles included randomized information for candidate first and last name, as proxies for gender and sectarian affiliation, education, job experience, and religiosity. Respondents were then asked to evaluate the candidate in several ways, including the following issue areas: economy (a masculine domain), education (a feminine domain), religion (a dubious domain), and the environment (a neutral domain). Findings indicate that evaluations of the female candidate differ considerably between male and female survey participants, with females being considerably more supportive of the female candidate in the feminine domain of education. These findings are somewhat supportive of status discontent theory. However, in other ways the findings support role congruity theory. For instance, both men and women respondents view the female candidate as less qualified in the domain of economics. Thus, the paper moves beyond examination of general support for women in public office to provide a theoretically motivated exploration of patterns of support for women in particular aspects of political representation.