Gender Differences in Policy Preferences: A Summary of Trends from the 1960s to the 1980s

Using 267 repeated policy questions (962 time points), we examine gender differences in policy choices and how they have changed from the 1960s to the 1980s. The average gender difference in preferences toward policies involving the use of force have consistently been moderately large. Sex differences in opinion toward other policies-regulation and public protection, "compassion" issues, traditional valueshave been approximately half as large but they also warrant more attention than in the past. Our analysis suggests that the salience of issues has increased greatly for women, and as a result differences in preferences have increased in ways consistent with the interests of women and the intentions of the women's movement. Robert Y. Shapiro is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Columbia University and a Research Associate at NORC, University of Chicago. Harpreet Mahajan is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at Columbia University. The authors owe special thanks to Kurt Veith for his collaboration in some of the research reported here. They are also grateful to Ethel Klein, Eleanor Singer, Ester Fuchs, Eric Smith, Tom Smith, Chaim Eyal, Benjamin Page, Garth Taylor, and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions. The survey data and tabulations were obtained from the files of the Policy Change and Public Opinion Change project at NORC, which was originally supported by National Science Foundation Grant No. SES-7912969. Support for the research reported here was provided by the Columbia Council for Research in the Social Sciences; the responsibility for analysis and interpretation is the authors'. An earlier version of this article was presented at the 1984 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Association for Public Opinion Research, Chicago, Illinois. Public Opinion Quarterly Vol 50 42-61 ?9 1986 by the American Association for Public Opinion Research Published by The University of Chicago Press 0033-362X/86/0050-42/$2.50 This content downloaded from 157.55.39.35 on Fri, 02 Sep 2016 05:08:59 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms TRENDS IN GENDER DIFFERENCES IN POLICY PREFERENCES 43 Significant changes, however, occurred. Not only were women less supportive than men of President Reagan but they had become less likely to consider themselves Republicans (e.g., Clymer, 1983; Schneider, 1984; Frankovic, 1982), and they had become more active politically than in the past and voted in greater numbers (see Wolfinger and Rosenstone, 1980; Verba and Nie, 1972; Welch, 1977; Klein, 1984; Andersen, 1975; Rapoport, 1981). Despite premature reports in November 1984 of a decrease in the gender gap since 1980, the evidence indicates that the sex difference in President Reagan's support was about the same in both elections and that the gender gap may have affected the outcomes of races for other offices (see Opinion Roundup, 1985:28-29; Klein, 1985; Keeter, 1985). Less attention has been paid to gender differences in policy preferences than to voting. Public opinion surveys usually revealed no appreciable differences in choices for government policies, and these seemingly inconsequential findings were not extensively reported and summarized. They were mentioned, however, in voting and public opinion studies (Erikson et al., 1980:186; Monroe, 1975:96; Pomper, 1975; Campbell et al., 1960; Berelson et al., 1954), and breakdowns of responses by sex were often (and are still) routinely reported with survey results and in special compilations, such as those prepared for Public Opinion Quarterly (e.g., "The Polls" and the earlier "Quarterly Polls"; see also Cantril with Strunk, 1951). Not surprisingly, there has been increasing interest in these differences in policy preferences because of their potential electoral importance.1 Moreover, although some policy issues may be electorally more important than others, any changes that occur in the aggregate distributions of public preferences may ultimately influence the political 1 For example, Frankovic (1982) showed that women's lower level of support for Reagan could be explained by their greater opposition than men to belligerent positions on war and peace issues, arms control, and the uses of force in foreign policy. This assumes, of course, that these issues and any others were equally important influences on voting decisions for men and women. But this need not have been the case. Klein (1984) showed that some policy preferences for which there were no significant sex differences had different effects on candidate choices. Most notably, men and women had similar opinions toward the ERA and other policies pertaining to women's rights, but over time women appeared to be more likely to take these issues into account in voting. Thus the political importance of policy choices may go beyond the differences and similarities in the positions held by different people. On the other hand, such differences are most likely to occur on salient and important issues, and we would expect larger differences to produce larger effects. Moreover, it is also much more difficult for candidates and policy makers to determine the relative importance of different issues for different groups, everything else being equal (i.e., positions on other issues, partisanship; see Klein, 1984; Shabad and Andersen, 1979), than it is to judge simply the extent of differences in preferences. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.35 on Fri, 02 Sep 2016 05:08:59 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 44 ROBERT Y. SHAPIRO AND HARPREET MAHAJAN agenda and the direction of public policy (see Monroe, 1979; Page and Shapiro, 1983). These opinions, to be sure, are not autonomous but may be shaped by events and objective conditions, and by processes of education, leadership, or manipulation (cf. Page and Shapiro, 1982, 1984). Gender and other differences may be important because some groups may be more politically powerful than others or their preferences may be the driving force behind changes in mass opinion. Gender differences may take on additional significance because of women's rising levels of political participation (and women simply constituting a large pool of eligible voters) and because of the greater attention they may pay to particular issues and government policies. As a result, even small sex differences in policy choices may no longer be inconsequential, especially if they occur across a wide array of issues around which coalitions can form. What do we know about these gender differences? What differences have there been and what changes, if any, have occurred? We will briefly summarize the findings of past studies and then build upon them with an analysis of a larger set of additional data.