Gender Flashcards
Box-Steffensmeier et. al. 2004
The dynamics of the US gender gap- 1979-2000
Deeper underlying differences in political attitudes become manifested differently according to the political landscape
Women are less likely than men to support any kind of aggression, oppose capital punishment and support stricter gun control laws, as well as being more supportive in government intervention in the economy, redistribution etc.. However, there are no significant differences on ‘women’s issues’ such as abortion, the ERA, and other feminist concerns.
Trends:
politics moves conservative -> women react more negatively (due to vulnerability or compassion)
poor economic conditions-> women move leftwards (due to being more reliant on welfare)
women become more economically vulnerable -> women move leftwards
Gillion et. al. 2018
Ideological sorting and the US gender gap
Thesis: ideological party sorting was partly to blame for the emergence of the gender gap in the US which began in the 70s. Liberal and conservative social movements began to affiliate themselves more with their respective parties, so male and female voters began to sort themselves accordingly.
Some evidence against the econ vulnerability thesis: more female education didn’t cause greater differences in social welfare preferences, nor were there growing differences between more and less educated people in this regard.
[then again, we could expect education to drive them leftwards]
They can’t comment with their data on the theories of increased female labor market participation and economic independence.
The theory that ‘the right turn in the policy positions of the national Republican Party create the partisan gender gap has substantial truth to it’.
Dassonneville and McAllister 2018
Socialisation and the gender engagement gap
Thesis: The presence of female politicians as role models when women become eligible to vote increases their engagement, knowledge and participation.
Other (insufficient) factors: differing levels of political interest, human capital (e.g. uni education, two parents, higher wages), measurement/survey biases.
Finding: that the presence of female politicians does matter, but only by decreasing men’s engagement and not increasing women’s.
Scope: many countries around the world
Dassonneville and Kostelka 2020
The cultural sources of the gender gap in turnout
Thesis: women’s political representation may somewhat reduce the differences between men and women. However, a more powerful predictor of gender differences in political interest is a country’s gender culture
EP elections as particularly suggestive of political interest (as they are low-stake)
Finding: for women, only a small effect of female legislators at 18-21 when maths score gender gaps are controlled for- the latter drives the significant variation between European countries.
Cotter et. al. 2011
The end of the gender revolution?
Liberalisation in gender roles and attitudes was monotonic post-1974, but this didn’t continue post-1994 (only small and shifting changes after then).
Thesis: this isn’t a broad cultural conservative shift, but rather a ‘specifically antifeminist backlash in the popular culture’. This included arguments that women attempted to ‘have it all’ in the 70s were now burning out from trying to do too much, and others who postponed marriage were now facing a shortage of men as their biological clocks ran out. Also ideas about ‘intensive motherhood’- that children needed lots more effort to be successfully raised.
New paradigm: “egalitarian essentialism”’, which combines support for stay-at-home mothering with ‘a continued feminist rhetoric of choice and equality’
Causes of the earlier trend:
- Cohort replacement of early conservative cohorts by recent liberal cohorts,
- Social structural changes such as increasing education and declining fertility,
- The entry of women into the labour force,
- A liberalising ideological climate of more egalitarian attitudes on many issues
- The rise of the second wave of the women’s movement.
Evidence: cohort controls, education/religion/ethnicity etc controls, and ideological changes couldn’t explain the changing trend. Effects were consistent across different demographics, as suggests a cultural shift (i.e. period effects)
Emmenegger and Manow 2014
Religion and the gender vote gap
Thesis: in Western Europe, the religious cleavage had caused women to vote more RW than men, despite their being economically more LW. The decline in religiosity caused the gender gap to flip since the 1980s.
Women couldn’t threaten to become socioeconomic swing voters, so both anti-clerical left parties and religious right parties ignored women’s interests.
This has began to change, though in some countries where the religious cleavage remains strong competition over religious voters remains restricted.
Campbell et. al. 2009
Do women need women representatives?
Thesis: Women need women representatives, due to elite’s gender gaps mirroring the wider public’s gender gaps.
Theory: Women may have uncrystallised interests- which aren’t yet fully ‘crystallised’ into a set of coherent policy demands, but which both women and female representatives share.
Evidence: Sex differences in attitudes to gender equality at the elite level mirror those in the mass public. This applies to attitudes towards gender equality, traditional gender roles, equality guarantees such as quotas.
There’s been a decline in support for descr repr, but an increase in hostility to traditional gender roles. These arguably move in different directions. The former trend may partly be due to younger women not acknowledging the barriers to women’s political recruitment, believing that men share their hostility to traditional gender roles, and/or not perceiving male /elites’/ opinions on gender issues.
Greene and O’Brien 2016
Diverse Parties, Diverse Agendas
Thesis: as the percentage of women in the parliamentary party increases, parties address a greater diversity of issues in their election campaigns, and shift leftwards (even when controlling for parties’ prior ideological positions).
Scope: 20 OECD countries
These countries are where parties have stronger control of their agenda, so women’s influence is likely to be least salient.
Evidence: for both above theses, but not for the further thesis that women’s presence causes parties to innovate on previously unaddressed issues.
Chattopadhyay and Duflo 2004
Effect of gender quotas.
Thesis: when the leadership of a village council seat in India has been reserved for a woman, leaders invest more in infrastructure that is directly relevant to women’s needs (and v.v. for men).
1/3 of councils were reserved for women randomly- this avoids the confounding factors that the councils that elect women may be more open to women’s issues.
Evidence: women focused more on women’s concerns (drinking water and roads in West Bengal and drinking water in Rajasthan), men focused more on men’s concerns (education in West Bengal and roads in Rajasthan)
Paxton et. al. 2007
Do women legislators make a difference?
- In US state legislatures women prioritise bills related to children, family, and women, and healthcare and social services. Defections from the Republican party drove this gap.
- women are more likely to sponsor bills related to education, health care, children’s issues, and welfare.
- women-sponsored bills get more scrutiny, but are just as likely to be turned into law.
- Women are better able to get their proposed legislation passed when there are less of them, as beyond a critical mass (15%) they start to become threatening to the majority
[missed section: explaining women’s underrepresentation]
Lawless 2015
Female candidates and legislators in the US (review)
[presents a v plausible case that both demand and supply factors keep women out of US politics. But this may not apply elsewhere- e.g. Mcelroy and March 2010 wrt Ireland elections, Lawless and Pearson 2008 re the media (in UK?)]
Women who run for state and federal office fare just as well as their male counterparts. But despite their parity on election day, far fewer women are elected.
Reasons often given: 1. incumbency advantage of the existing men. 2. women’s historic exclusion from pipeline professions.
CA to 1: states where term limits increased the number of open seats didn’t see an increase in female legislators.
CA to 2: women’s emergence as candidates didn’t keep pace with their educational and professional credentials
Women are not only less likely than men to consider running for office; they are also less likely actually to do it. Reasons:
- gatekeepers for candidate recruitment favouring men
- women rating their competence more lowly
When women run for office, they aren’t treated more unfavourably. News coverage was just as favourable, and party status has become increasingly important (rather than candidate personality)
When women achieve office, they are more likely to focus on ‘women’s issues’ (but evidence for this has waned over time). They also take a more cooperative and congenial approach, as opposed to one that emphasises hierarchy.
Symbolic representation: ‘I find that women represented by women tend to offer more positive evaluations of their members of Congress, but this difference does not consistently translate into political interest, trust, efficacy, or participation.’
Manza and Brooks 1998
The gender gap in US presidential elections
Thesis: changing rates of labour force participation explain the origins of the gender gap
[S- a bit hand-wavey and an old paper. Discounted other factors and said ‘it must be the economics stuff]
[note- Shorrocks 2018 contradicts this]
Discounted factors: differing socialisation, women’s increasing autonomy from their husbands (e.g. through divorce and later marriages), and feminist consciousness
Theory: women entered the workforce more, and thus were more exposed to political discussions, were more exposed to gender inequalities in the workplace, and were more dependent on the public sector than men.
Shorrocks 2018
The gender-generation vote gap in Europe and Canada
Thesis: In older cohorts, women are more right-wing primarily because of their greater religiosity and the high salience of religiosity for left-right self-placement and vote choice in older cohorts. In younger, more secular, cohorts, women’s greater support for economic equality and state intervention and, to a lesser extent, for liberal values makes them more left-wing than men. Secularisation, more than modernisation, is the main factor.
[me- modernisation also drives secularisation, as poverty is correlated with religiosity- OWID]
Theory: ‘Women are more supportive of more left-wing economic attitudes than men in all cohorts, but in older cohorts their greater religiosity appears to override that position’.
Contra I&N, it was secularisation that caused younger women’s more LW stances to feed through to vote choice, not modernisation (through labour force participation, increased education rates, and declining marriage rates).
This suggests a link between dealignment (of socioeconomic status from vote choice) and the gender-generation gap. More research needed on why women are more LW than men. But the gap is probably rooted in ‘more complex interactions between individual and partner economic status, occupation, and child caring responsibilities.’
Voas et. al. 2013
Modernisation and the gender gap in religiosity
Finding: National gender gaps in religiosity are more clearly associated with national income per capita or the Human Development Index than with measures of either secularisation or gender equality
Male/female differences are smallest for religious identity and progressively larger for attendance at services, self-description as religious, and frequency of prayer
Risk aversion mediates the relationship with development: women are more risk-averse than men, and risk-aversion is associated with religiosity.
Women in more developed countries are more independent, and can avoid the risks of irreligion. Risks: women are partly socialised into religion through being socialised into compliance and maintaining relationships; irreligion is risky to the extent it signals lack of compliance, disregard for parents’ preferences, and perhaps even an atypical lack of empathy
note: I have missed many of their factors discussed out here.
Imerzeel et. al. 2013
Explaining the gender gap in radical right voting
Scope: 12 Western European countries
Thesis: differences in party characteristics (outsider image and populist discourse style) do not account for cross-national differences in the gender gap
Mechanisms: gender employment differences predict radical right voting gaps (manual workers are more likely to be damaged by modernisation and globalisation, and men are more likely to be manual workers).
Proposed (unsuccessful) mechanism: once parties are political insiders and less populists, women will be more attracted to them.
Finding: although gender differences in employment status, occupational types and education explain some part of the gender gap in radical right voting’, there is a gender gap beyond what these explain. But the party positions don’t help to do this.
