Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Research on American political pr\arties continues to find a "gender gap" between parties. Also, differences between percentage of ideologues in the two parties persist. What explains these findings?

My paper investigates the possibility that a "masculine" sex-role orientation (as defined in psychological literature, sex-role orientation is socially defined and includes attitudes twoard individual responsibility and the importance of individual effort), helps explain both the gender gap and higher ideological constraint. In particular I am interested in PEW rsearch center findings on "entrepreneurs," or those with strong faith in the ability of individuals to succeed in a "free market." This group is overwhelmingly Republican, the most ideologically consistent of any group identified by PEW, and 76% male. I hypohtesize a positive correlation between masculine sex-role orientation among males and and the attitudes of entrepeneurs (strongly agreeing, for example, that "coporate profits are fair"). In addition, the ideological consistency of entrepreneurs can be partially explained by sex-role orientation since psychological research shows men who adopt a masculine sex-role orientation tend toward unwarranted certainty of opinions and rigidity of attitudes in general. Masculine sex-role orientation, then, should make ideologically guided beliefs more psychological appealing than adapting issue by issue. If this is true, there is at least a certain, somewhat prominent segment of the Republican party that is both largely male and rigidly ideological.

National surveys do not provide the data I need so I propose a set of trial surveys on undergraduates. Since I do not plan generalizations at this point, despite the obvious drawbacks, undergraduates may prove quite useful. As a group they have yet to develop an experiential basis for issues stands, yet at the same time they are developing political awareness and adult social identity. Hence, correlation between social identity and party identification should owe little to interest based issue preference and more to psychological identification. Party identity and sex-role orientation, then, are likely to be more conflated among undergraduates.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Over the past two decades, Americans are increasingly able to identify themselves as liberals and conservatives, and these self-identifications are increasingly correlated to partisanship. During this time period, a gender gap in ideological identifications also occurred. While the largest group of men and women were moving into the conservative category, a smaller group of women became more liberal. This liberal group is composed of women who are white, well educated, employed and single. Religious orientations and social issues such as abortion have become more connected to ideology for both men and women. Men’s ideology is more strongly defined by social welfare issues, while women’s ideology is influenced by their attitudes on the role of women in society.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Since the 1990s we have seen a growing ideological gap between men and women. Given the potential implications of this divide, scholars have begun to examine the sources of the gender gap in ideology. In this paper we argue that current examinations of the gender gap in political ideology fail to fully examine the process of ideological reasoning and give preference to difference over similarity. First, utilizing Item Response Theory (IRT), we assess whether men and women differentially connect their issue preferences to a left-right dimension and whether men and women with the same latent ideology have different probabilities of supporting public policies. Second, we examine whether men and women differ in the degree to which they base their self-reported ideology on a policy-based ideological construct. We find that while the gender gap in ideology reflects divergent issue positions, men and women think about the political world in much the same way.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Three theories have dominated the literature addressing differences between men and women in terms of household labor: Bargaining/Resource model, Time Availability, and Gender Ideology. I use the 2002 General Social Survey, to address differences between men and women in terms of time spent doing housework. Past studies employing these theories have never fully accounted for the substantial difference between married men and women in terms of relative contribution to household labor. I look at combined analyses of men and women in order to measure how much variation between married men and women in the United States in household labor is explained by each of these theories. I recast paid employment in the Bargaining/Resource model, rather than the Time Availability framework, since both men and women exchange employment time for housework. I find that both the Time Availability model and the Bargaining/Resource model account for the variation in household labor between men and women in the United States.

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