Feminist Identity, Feminist Politics

Abstract

Feminist scholars and activists have endorsed a broad and intersectional political agenda that addresses multiple dimensions of inequality, such as gender, sexuality, race/ethnicity, and class. We examine whether or not this perspective is also held by self-identified feminists in the general public. Drawing on public opinion polls from 2007 to 2009, we assess self-identified feminists' attitudes toward a range of social policies. We find that after controlling for sociodemographic factors and political ideology, feminist identity is associated with progressive attitudes on policies related to gender and sexuality (e.g., abortion) as well as policies related to other social justice issues (e.g., immigration, health care). We also find some interactions between feminist identity and gender, age, education, and political ideology, suggesting some heterogeneity in feminists' political attitudes. Overall, these findings suggest that feminists in the general public support an intersectional social justice agenda rather than a narrow focus on gender issues.

Gender, Religion, and Pro-Life Activism

“…People who minimize gender biases might miss or accept the ways that anti-abortion laws undermine female self-determination (Petterson and Sutton 2018). Conversely, people who recognize gender inequities might see how abortion laws only regulate the actions of women and how these actions constitute a backlash against liberalizing gender roles (Kelly and Gauchat 2016).…”

“…The “resource model” assumes that upper and middle-class individuals possess the educational and economic resources that make activism easier. Increased educational attainment seems to lessen pro-life sentiments (Bolzendahl and Myers 2004; Osborne and Davies 2012; Norrander 2014; Elder and Greene 2016; Kelly and Gauchat 2016; Clark 2017; Stout, Kretschmer, and Ruppanner 2017; Adamczyk and Valdimarsdóttir 2018), but access to education may have different effects for pro-life activism. Several studies claim that education increases the support of right to life groups among conservatives (Olson 2016) and pro-life activists have greater educational attainment than most Americans (Granberg 1982a; Maxwell and Jelen 1995; Norrander and Raymond 1998; Kaysen and Stake 2001).…”

“…Accordingly, some studies contend that pro-life activism is driven by vague imperatives to “preserve basic morals” (Gross 1995), bring back “God's laws,” or save the nation from moral decline (Maxwell and Jelen 1995). Moreover, people who attended pro-life events often say their religion guides their daily routines (Begun and Walls 2015; Mohamed 2018) and call themselves religious fundamentalists (Wilcox and Gomez 1990; Kelly and Gauchat 2016; Clark 2017; Adamczyk and Valdimarsdóttir 2018).…”

“…Variable selection in this study was guided by the “resource-model” of political participation (Brady, Verba, and Schlozman 1995) as well as empirical studies on pro-life activists (e.g., Granberg 1982a; Maxwell and Jelen 1996; Kaysen and Stake 2001; Swank and Fahs 2016). Even though the empirical literature on abortion attitudes is vast and well established (Elder and Greene 2016; Kelly and Gauchat 2016), studies on the motivations of pro-life protests are much rarer, older, and mostly descriptive (Luker 1984). Moreover, these older samples generally lack comparison groups of people who did not attend pro-life events (Granberg 1982a; Wilcox and Gomez 1990; Gross 1995; Maxwell and Jelen 1996) and newer studies are limited to samples of current college students (Swank and Fahs 2016), middle-aged women who graduated from college (Blankenship et al 2017), Amazon Mechanical Turk Employees (Allen, McCright, and Dietz 2017), volunteers in pro-life pregnancy centers (Hussey 2014) or people who attended the March for Life in 2017 (Heaney 2018; Heaney forthcoming).…”

“Putting gender on the table”: Understanding reactions to women who discuss gender inequality

“…; Becker & Wagner, 2009; Roy, Weibust, & Miller, 2007; van Breen et al, 2017), identifying as a feminist implies adherence to more progressive aspects of gender identity including awareness of gender inequality and commitment to change in the gender hierarchy (Roy et al, 2007; van Breen et al, 2017). While the majority of the work on feminist identification has been conducted only among women, some work suggests that feminist identification is also relevant for men’s attitudes toward gender inequality (Kelly & Gauchat, 2016; Konrad & Hartmann, 2001; McCabe, 2005). For example, results from a large national survey that showed both women’s and men’s attitudes regarding gender and social issues were related to their feminist identification (MaCabe, 2005).…”