Not Just Class: African Americans, Political Participation, and the Gender Divide.

ABSTRACTNot Just Class: African Americans, Political Participation, and the Gender DivideWhile numerous studies discuss the political implications of class divisions among African Americans, few studies analyze gender differences in political participation. This study finds that African American women's political participation differs from that of African American men. Employing data of a national cross-sectional survey with a sample of 1205 adult African American respondents from the 1993 National Black Politics Study (NBPS) conducted by the Center for the Study of Race at the University of Chicago (Dawson, Brown, and Jackson, 1993), this study concludes that 1) African American women's political participation is less than that of African-American men; 2) While the Black church facilitates political participation, it's affects are stronger for men than for women; 3) Belonging to an organization that improves the status of Black Americans facilitates equal gender political participation; 4) Black feminist consciousness decreases political participation on the part of men, but has no affect on Black women's participation; 5) Black nationalism facilitates Black women's political participation while having a negative affect on men's participation. These findings have important implications for post-civil rights era political mobilization. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]