The More Things Change the More They Stay the Same: Examining Gender Differences in Political Attitude Expression, 1952–2000

Abstract

We examine the differences in attitude expression between men and women over the past 50 years. Using the National Election Study (NES), we examine both the number of open-ended comments expressing like and dislike of candidates and parties and the percentage of times women responded "don't know" to specific closed-ended questions relating to policies, candidates, and groups. We find that women are less likely to express as many likes and dislikes toward the parties and candidates and are more likely to respond "don't know" than men. It is interesting that this difference has shown little change over the past 50 years. Using models that tap traditional reasons for differences between men and women, including political and psychological resources, we find that a political resource model diminishes the gender effect but does not eliminate it. The continued and unabated differences between men and women in their willingness to openly express political attitudes suggest that political socialization differences between men and women have not disappeared despite female increases in resources and other forms of political activity such as voting. We show that this failure to express attitudes in the survey situation helps explain the continuing gender differences for forms of political activity other than voting.