Cl. Day et Cd. Hadley, THE IMPORTANCE OF ATTITUDES TOWARD WOMENS EQUALITY - POLICY PREFERENCES AMONG SOUTHERN PARTY ELITES, Social science quarterly, 78(3), 1997, pp. 672-687
Objective. Women, among both political elites and the general public,
tend to be more liberal than men on a variety of issues ranging from s
ocial welfare and government services to national defense and environm
ental protection. We explore the reasons for this gender gap in policy
preferences among southern political party activists. Methods. Drawin
g on a large sample of southern county-level political parry activists
and national convention delegates, we test for sex differences in att
itudes through bivariate and multivariate (OLS) analyses. Results. Whe
n controlling for attitudes toward women's equality with men, we find
that sex differences in policy preferences are often insignificant or
even reversed with nonfeminist women taking more conservative position
s than men. Conclusions. The commitment to women's equality, more than
sex per se, is associated with general policy liberalism among these
activists.