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Much of the gender gap literature focuses on women's greater average liberalism relative to men. This approach masks considerable heterogeneity in political identity and behavior among women based on race, class, and other key socio-demographic characteristics. In the 2016 Presidential contest, political divisions among women were evident in exit polling, which demonstrated that a majority of white women voted for Donald Trump. This was not an anomaly but reflects a more long-standing distinction between white women and women of other racial and ethnic identifications. In this paper, we draw on intersectionality and system justification theory as frameworks for exploring the distinctive political behavior of white women. Using data from the 2012 and 2016 American National Election Studies, we evaluate the factors that attracted white women voters to the GOP and kept them in the fold in spite of expectations that sexism in the campaign would drive women away from the party during the 2016 Presidential race. Our analyses show that many white women endorse sexist beliefs, and that these beliefs were strong determinants of their vote choice in 2016, more so than in 2012. Our findings also point to important divisions among white women based on educational attainment and household income in terms of both the endorsement of sexism and vote choice. These results shed new light on white women's political behavior and qualify the existing gender gap literature in important ways, offering new insights into the ways whiteness, gender, and class intersect to shape political behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The #MeToo movement has brought heightened attention to issues of sexual harassment and assault in the United States since it burst onto the scene in 2017. Because sexual harassment is an issue that often affects women differently than men, we find a gender gap in support for the #MeToo movement in the contemporary period. Yet, given the polarized nature of our times, a more complete picture of this issue requires that we consider the impact of political party as well. With this approach, we are able to examine several important aspects of these attitudes—differences between women and men, diversity within gender groups, and gender gaps within each party. In doing so, we are also able to identify whether some individuals experience cross-pressures because of their gender and partisan identities. Using American National Election Studies data from 2018 to 2020, we find that partisanship is a significant influence on opinion on this highly gender-salient issue, identifying partisan differences that are larger than the differences between women and men. At the same time, we find that women are more polarized in their attitudes toward #MeToo than are men and that Republican women and Democratic men can exhibit the impact of cross-pressured identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sexism and feminism are often seen as opposing belief systems on a single dimension in American politics. Gender scholars, however, have noticed that these forces are not equal and opposite. The 2016 election represents a critical case for examining how gender-related attitudes and identities push and pull voters. Hillary Clinton was the first female presidential nominee of a major party and a self-proclaimed feminist facing an opponent considered by many to be hostile to women. As such, many observers predicted a substantial increase in the gender gap. However, the gap did not widen much compared to previous races, and nearly half of women chose Trump. Why? We argue that sexism – as commonly measured – mixes attitudes about women in general with those about feminists in particular. When feminism becomes salient, as in 2016, attitudes about this subgroup become more relevant to the vote. Relying on three studies – a 2016 survey on SSI, the 2018 CCES, and the 2016 ANES, we assess the role of anti-feminist attitudes and feminist identity across gender, race, and party. We find that sexism directed against feminists powerfully dampened support for Clinton across genders. However, feminist identity was much less common in the electorate, and had little effect on men's votes. Thus, although countervailing, these two forces are not equivalent. In 2016, the benefit of appealing to feminists was overwhelmed by the cost of activating voters who intensely dislike the group. These results reveal a consequential imbalance in the power of sexism and feminism in U.S. politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gender-based differences in political knowledge are pervasive in the United States and abroad. Previous research on the source of these differences has focused on resource differentials or instrumentation, with scholars arguing either that the gender gap is real and intractable, or that it is an artifact of the way the concept is measured. Our study differs from past work by showing that (1) male-female differences in political knowledge persist even when knowledge is measured with recommended practices, but that (2) knowledge gaps can be ameliorated. Across laboratory, survey, and natural experiments, we document how exposure to information diminishes gender-based differences in political knowledge. The provision of facts reduces-and often eliminates-the gender gap in political knowledge on questions covering a range of topics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of sex and gender to political behavior is reflected in the volume of work examining gender gaps in public opinion and partisan choice. Despite their centrality, sex and gender are poorly measured in survey research. The principal problem is the conflation of gender with sex in survey research. Consequently, gender is typically treated as a dichotomy, with no response options for androgynous gender identities, or indeed degrees of identification with masculine or feminine identities. We compare a new measure of genuine gender identification with a conventional measure of biological sex to determine whether the practice of using sex as a proxy for gender is sound. Sex is a fair proxy for gender, but for about a quarter of our sample, it is not. Moreover, greater nuance is gained when analyses incorporate a finer-grained measure of gender than is possible by using biological sex as a substitute. We argue that this is simply the start to an important conversation and that more research is needed to ascertain how we might best measure 'gender' in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aggression is a fundamental component of human behavior, yet is mostly absent from scholarship on mass political behavior. This study proposes and tests a theory of state violence attitudes in which citizens develop preferences from aggressive personality traits. In an original nationally-representative survey, trait aggression strongly predicts support for violent state policies, as does its subcomponent trait anger, rivaling the power of partisanship. More provocatively, the well-documented gender gap in state violence attitudes replicated here is not attributable to sex differences in aggressive personality. This work builds on recent advances in political personality research and highlights the important role of aggression in political behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are good reasons to expect that greater proportions of women in decision making bodies shape decision making in important ways that are not fully considered in the current literature. In the present study, a conceptual framework is presented that differs significantly from other explanations for gendered group decision making. Data from an original laboratory experiment offers support for the hypothesis that group outcomes will vary based on gender composition due to differing process strategies used by men and women. These data illuminate how gender diversity in decision making bodies is likely to shape policy making, as well as enhance our understanding of how policymaking is itself gendered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past few decades, a gender gap has emerged in the mass public in ideological self-placement. While most men and women moved in the conservative direction, another segment of women retained their liberal self-identifications. A gender gap also exists in how men and women define their ideology. Which issues are linked to ideological identities is conditioned by gender and time period. Finally, ideological identities are structure by nonpolitical values as well as political issues. Religiosity and religious beliefs have come to increasingly shape Americans’ ideological identities, with some differences across the two sexes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changes in the U.S. partisan balance over the past decade are often attributed to the enhanced political salience of cultural issues. Yet as white men have continued to become more Republican in recent years, white women increasingly identify with the Democrats. To the extent that cultural issues are influencing this partisan change, men and women must be responding differently to this cultural agenda. Using a pooled ANES data set from 1988 through 2000, I explore the extent to which cultural values are responsible for this gender realignment. Findings suggest that salient cultural issues influence the partisan choices of both men and women, however in somewhat different ways. For women, the issues themselves—reproductive rights, female equality, and legal protection for homosexuals—have become increasingly important determinants of party identification. For men, the influence of cultural conflict on partisanship is argued to be equally pervasive, albeit less direct. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]