Gender Gap in US Public Opinion

Abstract

In a representative democracy, policymakers, elected officials, and bureaucrats should heed public opinion. Research to date provides evidence that policymakers do care about the public’s positions on policy and that presidential administrations often seek public approval of their legislative agenda (see the Oxford Bibliographies in Political Science article, “Policy Responsiveness to Public Opinion” by Robert S. Erikson. Therefore, it is valuable to understand consistent and significant influences on the public’s policy positions and political attitudes. Gender appears to be a consistent and often significant influence on opinion. Generally, women tend to be more likely than men to adopt liberal positions on a long list of policies, including force issues, the size of the welfare state, the environment, and equal rights. For certain issues, gender seems to have a more complicated, or more conservative, influence, such as on abortion and on the legalization of marijuana. Overall, gender matters when considering public opinion in the United States. Moreover, issue gaps partially account for the gender gap in party identification and vote choice where women are more likely than men to identify as Democrats and vote for Democratic candidates. For example, in electoral simulations when women are given the same policy positions as men, a considerable reduction in the voting gender gap occurs. Readers interested in how gender influences political behavior should consult the Oxford Bibliographies in Political Science article, “Gender, Behavior, and Representation” by Elisabeth Gidengil. With women being slightly more than half of the population and being more likely to vote than men in recent elections, gender differences in policy preferences have substantial political consequences. This article discusses research on several issue areas with established gender gaps in opinion and provides a brief overview of scholarship investigating the origins of gender differences in public opinion. Much of the research cited here focuses on gender differences in public opinion but some material controls only for gender and finds a significant relationship.

Gen Z, Gender, and COVID-19

“…However, partisanship does not completely erase the gender gap in two cases: Gen Z women are more likely to be concerned that COVID-19 will harm their ability to keep their jobs. We also find that Gen Z men are significantly more likely to express concerns about their own personal health with respect to COVID-19, potentially because concern for one's own health does not require the empathic response described by Lizotte (2020).…”

“…Notably, though, the two significant gender differences that emerge in our multivariate analysis do speak to the gender gap literature: women's greater concern about how COVID-19 may jeopardize their employment echoes earlier studies that argue that the gender gap is rooted in women's greater economic vulnerability. Men's greater prioritization of their own personal health in wake of COVID-19 may also speak to their lack of empathy or “pro-social values” (Lizotte 2020).…”

“…Women are less likely than men to support the use of force, while being more likely to oppose capital punishment and support gun control (Caughell 2016; Celinska 2007; Haider-Marker and Joslyn 2001; Norrander 2008). Women are also more likely to support greater social welfare spending and a more activist government role in assisting the poor (Caughell 2016; Fox and Oxley 2015; Lizotte 2020; Norrander 2008). There is also evidence of a gender gap in attitudes toward the coronavirus specifically.…”

“…Keywords: gender gap, Generation Z, coronavirus, party polarization P olitical scientists have long studied the American gender gap in public opinion, finding that women tend to be more liberal than men (Lizotte 2020). Yet women are far from monolithic in their political views, and thus the interplay of ideology and gender in the current era has largely been mediated by elite-level party sorting (Gillion, Ladd, and Meredith 2018).…”

Choosing Choice: How Gender and Religiosity Shape Abortion Attitudes among Latinos

“…As among White Americans, Latino religiosity and denominational choice are strongly correlated with conservative abortion attitudes (Bartowski et al 2012; Higgins 2014), exhibited by greater opposition to abortion among Evangelicals compared to Catholics or mainline Protestants (Bartowski et al 2012; Ellison, Echevarría, and Smith 2005; Wong 2018a). And yet religiosity, particularly American Catholicism and Evangelicalism, is both gendered and racialized; indeed, religious behavior and denominational influence have differential effects on Anglo and Black men's and women's political attitudes and behaviors (Cassese and Holman 2016, 2017; Lizotte, Carey, and Meikle 2017; Farris and Holman 2014). Religious traditions operate distinctly within immigrant communities; religiosity may have different political implications among Latinos than among non-Hispanic Whites (Wong 2018a).…”