Hierarchy and Identity: A New Explanation for the Gender Gap

By Scott Blinder and Meredith Rolfe

From the “angry white male” of the Reagan era to the “year of the woman” in national electoral politics in 1992, from “soccer moms” and “NASCAR dads” to “security moms” in more recent elections, gendered differences in party identification and voting behavior have become a staple of popular and scholarly commentary on American electoral politics. Scholars have documented the existence of a gender gap in voting behavior, partisan preferences, and issue positions—more women than men vote Democratic, identify themselves as Democrats, and hold more liberal or Democratic positions on many domestic policy issues, particularly on “social welfare” and military issues.

With the occasional notable exception, two classes of explanation of the gender gap predominate. First, the “compassion” theory holds that women are more compassionate than men, presumably because of different patterns of childhood socialization or experiences in adulthood. This compassion gap leads more women to favor the Democratic Party because of its more compassionate policies on social welfare spending and equality for racial minorities. Second, the “state dependency” theory notes that women are more often economically needy and rely on state provision of welfare. This leads to more liberal issue positions and, in turn, to more frequent Democratic voting and party identification.

In what follows, we move toward an alternative explanation of the gender gap, but, equally importantly, we attempt to dispel these prevailing explanations. In our view, a key flaw in the gender gap literature is that it selectively rejects data that do not exhibit the gender gap phenomenon, notably including opinions of African Americans and other racial minorities.

We attempt to address this deficiency by examining the gender gap in partisanship and issue attitudes among white and black Americans using data from several large national surveys. Two are quite commonly used: the American National Election Study (ANES) and the NORC General Social Survey (GSS). A third, the National Black Politics Study (NBPS) of 2000, is widely used among researchers on black public opinion, as it contains a large representative sample of African Americans. Finally, we use a national survey conducted by Knowledge Networks in 2003 and 2004 that contains a large oversample of African Americans.

According to the compassion theory, heightened compassion leads women to support government spending on so-called “social welfare” programs more often than men do. This difference causes gender gaps in partisanship and vote choice, as more women than men choose the party with more liberal or generous issue positions on these social welfare issues. How can we test these assertions?

In our view, if women’s compassion drives the gender gap, the data should show the following:

• The partisan gender gap should appear with some consistency across subgroups of the population.

• The gender gap on “compassion” or “social welfare” issues should appear across subgroups.

• The gender gap on “compassion” issues should be consistent over time.

• More compassionate individuals should be more Democratic in party identification and vote choice.

We test the first two implications of the compassion theory by comparing African American opinion to white American opinion. As shown in Figure 1, the partisan gender gap is much weaker among African Americans than among white Americans—it appears later and less consistently over time, and is smaller when it does appear. Black men self-identify as Democrats almost as often as black women and much more so than white women.

Of course, African Americans’ overwhelming Democratic partisanship is well known, but the issue positions of black men may be more surprising, and more damaging to the compassion theory. As indicated by the selected items in Table 1, a thorough review of survey questions over all available years on spending on numerous government programs indicates that gender gaps on social welfare issue positions were rare among African-American survey respondents. With the exception of child care spending, African-American men were every bit as liberal as African-American women across a range of social welfare issues. Moreover, they were also much more liberal than white women on all “compassion” issues. Even on the issue of child care, which one might think would be essential to many more women than men, black men were more supportive of spending than white women, and nearly as supportive as black women.

Looking at variation over time as well as across racial groups, we find additional evidence against the compassion theory. Where the compassion theory would seem to suggest that the gender gap on social welfare issues should exist across time and political context, we find that issue-position gender gaps often emerged later than partisan gaps. There were no apparent or consistent differences between men’s and women’s positions on, for example, government provision of health care prior to 1988 (or 1992), of social welfare services prior to 1989, of spending on AIDS and HIV care except in 1994 and 1996, and of jobs prior to the 1970s.

Even on perhaps the prime “compassion” issue, federal spending on the poor, the gender gap was not consistently present from year to year. Males differed significantly from females in attitudes towards spending on the poor only during presidential election years between 1984 and 2006 (with the exception of 1988) and a brief period from 1991 to 1994, where gaps were somewhat significant in nonelection years. A similar link between elections and male attitudes toward whether the government was “too strong” or “not strong enough” is also noteworthy, given that a white gender gap on this question is only found in presidential election years prior to 1980 (after which time it is found consistently).

Notably, these issues stand in contrast to noncompassion issues, for which there is a consistent gender gap, often across racial lines and, again, often in the “reverse” direction. Recall that, as shown in Table 1, more men than women prefer increased spending on many discretionary domestic federal budget items. These gender differences hold across racial lines.

As most frequently proposed in the gender gap literature, the state dependency theory is a straightforward set of claims involving women’s self-interest. The premise is that women, more often than men, are economically vulnerable and actually or potentially dependent on state welfare provision. Thus, they will favor such programs out of sheer self-interest. In turn, they will favor the Democratic Party and its candidates because they, too, favor more spending on social welfare programs.

The self-interest hypothesis has been disputed on many grounds. However, since it continues to be seriously entertained in widely read scholarly journals, it seems worth further debunking with the following straightforward test: If women’s greater reliance on social welfare spending is driving the gender gap, then the gender gap should be primarily a lower-class or lower- and middle-class phenomenon. As seen in Figure 2, the data show that the opposite is true.

Far from being the province of the lower echelons, gender gaps among white Americans are larger and more consistent among the respondents whose income places them into the upper third of American families, precisely the stratum in which women are least likely to need (or have ever needed) state welfare programs for economic support. More women than men in the highest income bracket voted for the Democratic presidential candidate in every election from 1968 to 2004, a gap that is consistently statistically significant from 1988 to 2004 and close to statistical significance in 1968, 1980, and 1984. Among respondents whose income falls into the lowest third of household income, there is no discernible gender gap in any year except 1996.

Another version of the state dependency argument suggests that women’s greater dependence on or closeness to the government leads to greater support for government spending and government programs in general, as opposed to market-based solutions to social problems. Table 1 shows no evidence of a consistent female preference for government spending in general. Men, more often than women, preferred increased spending on many government programs, including parks and recreation, scientific research, space exploration, transportation infrastructure including highways and mass transit, and the military and defense.

Having argued against the compassion and self-interest explanations for the gender gap, we now wish to move toward an alternative explanation. Previous research has shown that men are on average more willing than women are to endorse what Jim Sidanius and colleagues call group-based inequality or hierarchy. In contrast to our earlier findings on compassion differences, GSS survey evidence confirms that this difference between men and women exists and is related to the partisan gender gap. We use several measures of preferences regarding income equality from the GSS. The most direct measure available, from the 1984 GSS, asks respondents to rate (on a five-point scale) the acceptability of income inequality across social groups. We also use related questions from additional survey years which focus more on the particular situation in the United States.

What we found were clear and consistent differences between white men and white women across all measures of attitudes toward income equality. On the generic measure of acceptability of income differences, a gender gap existed among men and women of all races. The gap was consistently in the direction expected and present at all income levels, although it was statistically significant only among white respondents in the highest third of family income and among black respondents in the lowest third of income.

On measures that were not generic but, rather, were linked to American political issues, we see the racialized gender gap emerge again. More white women than white men supported a larger role for the government in reducing income inequality in America, and the gap remained significant regardless of individual income. Fewer white men than women expressed concern about the size of the income gap in America, and the gap was consistent with respect to the year of the survey and the income level of the respondent. Only the question asking about the income tax on the rich showed any significant variation in the gap over time or with respect to income level. In addition, also as expected, black males and females shared similar attitudes toward the contemporary income gap in America and the role of government in reducing income inequality. But the crucial point here is that, when asked about income inequality in a general, generic way rather than in the American context, men were less egalitarian than women, and this gender difference held across racial lines.

Extending our analysis, we examined the association between these attitudes toward income inequality and Democratic partisanship and vote choice, controlling statistically for compassionate attitudes (which fortunately were measured directly in the 2002 and 2004 GSS) as well as demographic variables. We find that more egalitarian attitudes predict Democratic partisanship and vote choice in both elections. As would be expected from our critique of the compassion theory, empathy has no discernible impact on either vote choice or partisanship. Moreover, the inclusion of attitudes toward income inequality in effect eliminates the gender gap; once we account for the impact of attitudes toward income inequality, gender no longer has a statistically significant association with partisanship or vote choice. We replicated the analysis with 1984 ANES data, and find that these results also hold for Democratic partisanship in 1984 and vote choice in 1980.  

A static gender difference in predispositions toward inequality cannot, however, explain the contingent, changing gender gap. For this, we turn to discuss political and social identity. We suggest that gender gaps emerge when men identify politically with groups that benefit from status quo inequality or group-based hierarchy. Among groups that are disadvantaged by existing inequalities, men’s identification with their group will dampen their typically higher levels of support for inequality, and thus prevent the emergence of gender gaps.

What does this mean for contemporary American gender gaps? First, we suggest that predispositions toward social and economic equality (unlike compassion) will be associated with Democratic partisanship and issue attitudes for those Americans, and that this association will be higher among those who identify with group(s) that are the “winners.” Second, we suggest that political identities will have complex but predictable effects on gender gaps—particularly on men’s responses to hierarchy and inequality. In addition, if we are correct about the role of identity, then we should see gender gaps emerge among African Americans who do not strongly identify with their racial group—those who lack a strong sense of what Michael Dawson in 1994 called “linked fate.”

Meanwhile, we also hypothesized that gender gaps should emerge—across all subgroups of African Americans regardless of linked fate—on issues that invoke a national, American identity, rather than the African-American identity more relevant to issues of domestic politics. In issues of international affairs, black men can identify, as Americans, with a group that benefits from existing inequalities in the global arena. This shift in relevant identities should bring out gender gaps among African Americans.

As can be seen in Table 3, gender gaps were found among both whites and blacks in attitudes toward military-related issues. Greater male support for military spending and military involvement occurred among both white and black Americans across a range of time periods and different issues. In those rare cases when a gap in attitudes was either minimal or not evident, we find that this holds for both white and black respondents.

This inspection of issue-based gaps for black and white respondents also undercuts the argument that the gender gap comes from the Republican emphasis on and association with war. Gender gaps are fairly consistent across blacks and whites on military issues, while the partisan gender gap is, of course, predominantly found among whites.

While our alternative explanation for the gender gap garners support from our analysis, there is clearly still much to be done here. In particular, we need to be able to address change over time: Why did the gender gap emerge only when it did—in 1964 for vote choice and 1980 for partisan identification? We have so far developed only a speculative response to this question, though we strongly suspect that it involves changes in the parties’ positions on civil rights in the 1960s, as well as declines in union membership and other social bases of male Democratic identification from the days of the New Deal coalition.

We hope, however, that we have steered the conversation toward explaining the political behavior of white men versus that of women, and that men’s egalitarianism and social and political identities are fruitful at least as directions of further inquiry into the causes of the gender gap. And, while much remains to be done in hashing out the right combination of identity and inegalitarianism, we would argue that our findings of gender gaps among African Americans who are low in linked fate, and among all African Americans on issues of war and defense, suggest there is something in this notion that is worth further study.

On less speculative ground, we conclude that explanations of the gender gap should move away from the compassion and self-interest theories. A compassion-based gender gap cannot account for African-American male opinion or changing issue attitudes over time; a self-interest or state dependency explanation cannot explain that the gender gap is preeminently an upper-class phenomenon. Future research should, as we have demonstrated, incorporate data on African Americans and other sets of respondents and issues that do not exhibit a gender gap, and attempt to use this additional variation as leverage toward a better explanation of the phenomenon. Failing to do so has helped lead explorations of the gender gap down less profitable paths of inquiry.

Additional Reading

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