Gender and Sexuality
Updated Mar 9, 2025
Monday:
Tuesday
Wednesday
Early reactions to the election
Gendered political socialization (If time)
Gender, sexism and representation (Huddy and Terkildsen 1993)
Friday
Review Draft Survey Instrument
Sexual identity as political identies (Egan 2012)
We’re gonna talk about election:
What happened?
Why did it happen?
What have we learned…
What comes next?
Trump wins the Presidency (~312-226 electoral votes)
Republicans flip the Senate (51-57 seat majority)
Control of the House still in play (probably won’t know for a while)
Why did Kamala/Democrats lose?
Why did Trump/Republicans win?
What’s the counterfactual?
What would have happened had:
It’s the campaigns
It’s about specific groups of voters
It’s about the issues: immigration, abortion, democracy, crime, culture war
It’s about the issue: “it’s the economy, stupid”
It’s about racism, sexism, transphobia, xenophobia
It’s about the vibes (anti- establishment/elite/incumbency )
It’s probably about all of these things, to some degree. Beware of singular explanations and broad generalizations.
These are mostly from CNN’s exit polling as well as NBC and the Washington Post
The margins can and will change when weighted against the final results
Are the polls fundamental broken?
Yes Missed the strength and depth of Trump;s support in three elections
No: Wait for the final counts. The absolute polling error likely within historical margins
Yes: The forecasts were off in all the battleground states
No: Forecasts showed a 50-50 race in which a Trump sweep was the most likely (of many) possible battleground outcomes
Yes: Polls like the Selzer/Iowa poll missed bigly
No: But polls that took a more aggressive weighting approach were more accurate
Yes: It’s unclear that their strategies were anything but luck/fear of getting it wrong (e.g. weighting on past vote tended to increase support of Harris )
No: Still the polls picked up evidence of racial depolarization, education polarization, shifts in PID that shaped the election….
Polling is hard.
Polling with Trump on the ticket is particularly hard
My answer is always relative to what?
Polls are useful even when they’re wrong
A lot depends on the House
Congress has several biases toward the status quo and inaction (super-majoritarian Filibuster)
More worried about the Executive Branch
How much does Trump care about governing?
A lot depends on you
Politics is about power
To wield power you need to win elections
Winning elections requires coalitions
Building coalitions requires compromise
It’s a lot of work, that often happens at a more local level
But it’s worth it. And it’s more important than ever.
Let’s do some combination of the following:
More discussion of the election
Broad overview of gender and politics literature (pick up in more detail next week)
Click here to be rewarded for your attendance on a beautiful Wednesday afternoon
Take a few moments and think about the election from some of the perspectives we’ve talked about this semester.
What
Ideology and issues
Political knowledge and misinformation
Retrospective and economic voting
Social identities
Have our answers about citizen competence changed?
What the polls (and forecasts) are saying?
So can we trust the polls? (Nate Cohn Op-ed)
Mobilization and Persuasion
Predictions
What to watch for on election night
Final batch of polls continues to show a toss-up, with a range of results that are good, mixed, or bad for each candidate
Harris +3 in Selzer/DMR Poll in
Harris +35% among Latinos in Univision/YouGov
NYT/Sienna (+Harris: NV, NC, WI, GA; Tie: PA, MI; +Trump: AZ)
Morning Consult (+Harris: MI; Tie: PA, AZ +Trump: GA, NC, WI )
Let’s take a few minutes to discuss Nate Cohn’s article
What’s the case for optimism
What’s the case for pessimism
What do we think
Polling was hard during the pandemic
Pollsters adapt
Polling elections with Trump is hard
Weighting on past vote is no panacea
Are we over- or under-compensating
The polls will be off
Systematic polling errors in either direction seem plausible
Why bother? What’s the alternative
Campaigns require both mobilization and persuasion
Strong evidence that GOTV campaigns (doorknocking, mail, phone) have small but real effects A. S. Gerber, Green, and Larimer (2008)
Evidence for persuasion is more mixed for both canvassing (Kalla2018-jf?) and ads (A. S. Gerber et al. 2011)
The campaigns have very different “ground games”:
And very different advertising strategies
The best available data tell us this race is a toss-up
Let’s walk through what I think are the case for each candidate
Slightly ahead in most forecasts
Historical strength and focus on unlikely voters
Unconventional ground game
After stalling in the polls, seems to be trending in the right direction
Asymmetric costs of polling errors
General vibes?
When Harris campaign expects to see results in key states. Per email I just got pic.twitter.com/dFdBc2DKtD
— Ayden 🎗️ (@AydenMakesMaps) November 3, 2024
What’s the difference between Sex and Gender
How does gender predict politics?
How is gender politically socialized?
How does gender and attitudes about gender shape political behavior
How does sexual identity shape political behavior?
Sex = Gender
Binary, fixed, biologically determined
Sex as a proxy for gender
Sex ≠ Gender
Sex and Gender are related but distinct concepts
Gender: “what society makes of sex”
Gender Identity: “a personal sense of ones own gender”
Although differences in gender may be heritable (Hatemi et al. 2011)
Viewing gender as a social construct leads us to think about gender in terms of:
Some features of gender are a function of biology
But sex (and gender) are not as binary or fixed as they are studied empirical models
Gender as a social identity leads us to issues of
Measurement:
And theory:
Take a few moments and write down how you would go about measuring gender?
Fixed response? How many responses?
Open response? How would you code it?
Continuous scale? What are the end points?
Multiple scales? How many dimensions?
Source: Westbrook and Saperstein (2015)
Source: Westbrook and Saperstein (2015)
Bittner and Goodyear-Grant (2017) argue gender and sex are poorly measured in standard survey research, and propose and alternative measurement approach, concluding:
Sex is a fair proxy for gender, but for about a quarter of our sample, it is not
Source: Bittner and Goodyear-Grant (2017)
Source: Bittner and Goodyear-Grant (2017)
How might we measure “gender group” consciousness?
Stout, Kretschmer, and Ruppanner (2017) propose a concept of gender linked fate:
Adapt Linked Fate approach and Ask male/female respondents, respectively:
Burns and Kinders (2011) of discussion of the similarities and differences between racial and gender identities:
Similarities
Key difference
As with race, research document’s gaps between men and women in
Partisan Identification (Women → + Democratic)
Political Participation (Women → - Participation)
Political Knowledge (Women → - Political Knowledge)
Political Attitudes (Women → + Liberal Attitudes)
As with race
Analysis can be overly simplistic
Satisfying explanations are often lacking
Unlike race
Source: Burns et al. 2018
Source: Mondak and Anderson 2004
Source: Mondak and Anderson 2004
Source: Wolak and McDevitt 2011
What explains longstanding gaps in levels of political interest, knowledge and participation between men and women?
Gendered Political Socialization contends that the intersection of gender and political socialization:
shape children’s perceptions such that politics is a masculine domain and political leaders are more likely to be men and (2) result in girls perceiving a mismatch between their gendered expectations and with exploring politics or pursuing political roles (p. 486)
Theories of socialization: A broad field of research which argues early childhood experiences and environments have lasting social and political effects.
Social role theory suggests “children mimic the gendered division of labor that they observe in the home and that this behavior reinforces (and perpetuates) gender roles, traits, and motivations”
Gendered Socialization:
H1: Gendered occupational preferences
H2: Gendered occupational preferences strengthen with age
Political Socialization:
Gendered Political Socialization
H4: Childrens’ images of political leaders more likely to be male
H5: Images of female political leaders less likely with age
H6: Girls report lower levels of political interest and ambition than boys
Interviews and surveys of 1,604 children from 18 schools in Boston, upstate NY, NE Ohio, and New Orleans from grades 1-6.
Key outcomes:
Methodology:
As girls learn more about politicsand internalize society’s expectations of them, they are less likely to see traditional politics as a place for them to lead. And while our data only suggest, but do not offer direct evidence of, continuity between atti- tudes in childhood and attitudes in adulthood, they do indicate that efforts to elevate the political interest and ambition of women must begin early.
Gender has political consequences as evidenced by “gender gaps”
The cause(s) of those gaps are complicated and varied
Need good measurement and better theory
Big questions rarely have simple answers:
Historical, social, economic, inequality
Stereotypes and Discrimination
Socialization and selection
What else?
Petrocik (1996) parties “own” certain issues
Democrats are better at handling social issues like health care
Republicans are better at economic and foreign policy
Campaigns prime voters to think about the issues that benefit their candidate
Scholars make similar claims with regard to gender. Voters tend to think:
Women are better able to handle “feminine” social issues
Men are better at “masculine” issues related to the economy and defense
Are these associations due to gender stereotypes or associations between gender and partisanship?
Huddy and Terkildsen (1993) conduct an experiment, randomly assigning male and female candidates to have either masculine or feminine traits
[Elizabeth/Robert] McGuire, a lawyer, has been described by legal colleagues as [an intelligent, compassionate, trustworthy, and family-oriented/a tough, articulate, and ambitious] opponent with proven leadership skills and strong [people/administrative] skills. Ms. McGuire, forty-two, is a life-long resident of Connecticut, a long- time political activist, and currently is seeking office at the local level.
Gender shapes voter evaluations of candidates
The effect of such stereotypes isn’t always clear:
Gender stereotypes have to be activated (Bauer 2014)
Women can benefit from running “as women” (Herrnson et al. 2003)
Women may also benefit from running counter to stereotypes Bauer 2017
As with race, many measures distinguishing:
Type:
Overt vs Covert
Old-fashioned vs Modern
Dimensionality:
Old-fashioned sexism (Swim et al. 1995)
Women are generally not as smart as men
I would be equally comfortable having a woman as a boss as a man
Old-fashioned/Overt sexism (Spence, Helmreich and Stapp 1973)
Modern sexism scale (Swim et al. 1995)
Denial: Discrimination against women is no longer a problem in the United States
Antagonism: It is easy to understand the anger of women’s groups in America
Resentment: Over the past few years, the government and news media have been showing more concern about the treatment of women than is warranted by women’s actual experiences.
Old-fashioned/Overt sexism (Spence, Helmreich and Stapp 1973)
Modern Sexism scale (Swim et al. 1995)
Ambivalent Seismic (Glick and Fiske (1997))
Benevolent: “A good woman should be set on a pedestal.”
Benevolent: “Women have a quality of purity few men possess.”
Hostile: “Most women interpret innocent remarks or acts as being sexist.”
Hostile: “Women seek to gain power by getting control over men.”
I’m not sure there’s a good answer
Two applications
Modern Sexism Shaped the 2016 Election
Hostile Sexism and the 2020 Elections
Source: Sides, Vavreck and Tesler (2019)
Source: Sides, Vavreck and Tesler (2019)
:scale 50%
Source: Data for Progress
:scale 50%
Source: Data for Progress
:scale 50%
Source: Data for Progress
Sexism appears to predict vote choice and political attitudes
How could we unpack the mechanism(s) behind this relationship
What might be done?
If we could change people’s scores on modern/hostile sexism, would we change politics?
Take a few minutes to review your notes on Egan (2012)
What explains the political cohesion of lesbian, gay, and bisexual citizens?
Is it a function of identity mobilization
Or a reflection of selection effects (common attributes that predict shared identity)
While the preponderance of the evidence is that the degree to which one is sexually attracted to those of the same sex is a trait that is fixed at birth or in early childhood, being gay is a chosen identity – an identity acquired among a non-random subset of those endowed with the trait of same-sex attraction.
Past work on identities suggest chosen identities → + cohesion
Mobilization
Acculturation
Egan proposes an alternative mechanism: selection
“[T]he process by which stable characteristics that are truly ‘unmoved movers’ – the indelible aspects of one’s background and upbringing – help to determine whether a person self-selects into membership of a politically relevant group” (p. 598)
“To the extent that group members are loyal partisans for reasons that antecede the acquisition of group identity – and therefore are less easily moved by appeals to group interests – it becomes more difficult for group leaders to make a credible threat to withhold support from their allies in order to win policy concession” (p. 598)
Failing to control for “pre-treatment” variables (things that predict identity acquisition) biases our esimtates of the effects of that identity
Controlling for factors “post-treatment” likewise obscures the effect of identity, since these factors may be influenced by identity acquisition
“If selection is at work in making a group’s members politically distinctive, the ceteris paribus differences in political views between group members and the general population should be reduced after conditioning on the effects of background characteristics that shape identity choice and are also known to be determinants of political views.”
In addition, if selection effects are present, it should be the case that group members are distinct from non-group members from the moment they identify with the group and thus the development of political cohesion should not require the mobilization processes that can accompany the passage of time, contact with group members or receipt of co-ordinating messages from group leaders
Data: GSS and exit poll surveys
Method: Matching
Matching is a statistical procedure to adjust for differences between groups in observational data
When we match we’re trying to recreate what is accomplished by random assignment in an experiment
While random assignment guarantees this for all variables (observed and unobserved), matching provides balance only on observed covariates.
Egan argues selection accounts for group cohesion among LGB individuals
Matching as a tool for making causal claims with observational data
Possible critiques and/or extensions?
POLS 1140