Choosing the Velvet Glove: Women Voters, Ambivalent Sexism, and Vote Choice in 2016

Abstract

This paper examines the extent to which ambivalent sexism toward women influenced vote choice among American women during the 2016 Presidential election. I examine how this varied between white women and women of color. The 2016 American National Election Study (ANES) features several measures from the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (ASI)—a scale developed by Glick and Fiske (1996) to assess sexist attitudes toward women. An index of these measures is used to examine the extent to which ambivalent sexist attitudes influenced women's vote choice for Donald Trump, controlling for racial resentment, partisanship, attitudes toward immigrants, economic anxiety, and socio-demographics. On the one hand, my findings indicate that ambivalent sexism was a powerful influence on women's Presidential vote choice in 2016, controlling for other factors. However, this finding, based on a model ofall women votersis misleading, once an intersectional approach is undertaken. Once the data are disaggregated by gender and race, white women's political behavior proves very different than women of color. Among white women, ambivalent sexist views positively and significantly predicts vote choice for Trump, controlling for all other factors. However, for women of color, this relationship was negative and posed no statistical significant relationship to voting for Trump. Scholarship in gender and politics that does not account for group differences in race/ethnicity may present misleading results, which are either underestimated or overestimated.

Is a “Christian America” a More Patriarchal America? Religion, Politics, and Traditionalist Gender Ideology

“…) and patriarchal views of gender (Bock et al. ; Frasure‐Yokley ; Rothwell et al. ; Schaffner, MacWilliams, and Nteta ) contributed to Trump's populist support and ultimate electoral victory in 2016 is not a coincidence.…”

The Differential Effects of Economic Conditions and Racial Attitudes in the Election of Donald Trump

“…Furthermore, it risks writing people of color out of the story of the 2016 election, instead telling that story on only white voters' terms (Coates 2017). Studies examining the intersection of race and gender in the 2016 election have found differential relationships between sexism and Trump support across different racial groups (Bracic, Israel-Trummel, and Shortle 2018;Frasure-Yokley 2018), with gender attitudes being more strongly associated with vote choice among white voters than their non-white counterparts. A similar approach could add similar nuance to our understanding of racial attitudes and economic distress in the 2016 contest.…”

Is a “Christian America” a More Patriarchal America? Religion, Politics, and Traditionalist Gender Ideology

“…The finding that both Christian nationalism (e.g., Whitehead et al 2018a) and patriarchal views of gender (Bock et al 2017;Frasure-Yokley 2018;Rothwell et al 2019;Schaffner, MacWilliams, and Nteta 2018) contributed to Trump's populist support and ultimate electoral victory in 2016 is not a coincidence. The two factors, as we have shown, are strongly connected in Americans' minds.…”

“…Importantly, Christian nationalism bolsters Trump's populist appeal not merely as a direct response to Trump's self-advertisements as a defender of religious freedom, but also indirectly through its connection to other predictors of Trump support, such as racism, Islamophobia, gun rights, xenophobia, homophobia, authoritarianism, and traditional views of the family (Brubaker 2017;Davis 2018a;Mc-Daniel, Nooruddin, and Shortle 2011;Merino 2010;Whitehead 2015a, 2015b;Straughn and Feld 2010;Whitehead and Perry 2015;Whitehead, Schnabel, and Perry 2018b). What has yet to be explored, however, is the extent to which contemporary Christian nationalism-specifically, an ideology that idealizes and advocates a fusion of Christianity and American civic life-may be closely linked with another ideology associated with Trump's brand of "MAGA" populism, namely, traditionalist views of gender roles and norms (Bock, Byrd-Craven, and Burkley 2017;Brubaker 2017;Frasure-Yokley 2018;Rothwell, Hodson, and Prusaczyk 2019).…”