Gender gap or gender gaps? New perspectives on support for government action and policies

This paper clarifies the theoretical bases for expecting women to be more s upportive of government programs than are men. We identify several factors not developed in past literature: (1) differences in emotional responses to social problems, (2) gendered differences in the awareness of those proble ms among one's own kin, (3) differences in the perceived fairness of existi ng social institutions, (4) differences in the perceived efficacy of govern ment programs, and (5) variations in the preferred form that those programs should take. Testing hypotheses using data from a 1995 survey of public op inion covering five policy domains, we find that the gender gap in these do mains is substantial, comparable to that associated with race and partisans hip. These differences are attributable in part to factors identified previ ously in the literature-such as gendered differences in perceived opportuni ty-but are also affected by differences between men and women in the percei ved efficacy of government programs (e.g., the extent of fraud and abuse) a nd differences in the preferred form those programs should take.