The rise and decline of “gender gaps” in support for military action: United States, 1986-2011

By: Feinstein Y.
Published in: Politics and Gender
SDGs : SDG 05  |  Units: Social Sciences  | Time: 2017 |  Link
Description: In the past several decades, many scholars of public opinion in the United States have argued that American women are le ss likely than American men to endorse military action as a means to deal with international problems. Evidence for this “gender gap” has been found in studies of public opinion during major international conflicts (Bendyna et al. 1996; Wilcox, Ferrara, and Allsop 1993), as well as studies of longitudinal trends that examined pooled data sets from multiple conflict periods (Berinsky 2009; Burris 2008; Fite, Genest, and Wilcox 1990; Shapiro and Mahajan 1986). Researchers sometimes view men’s generally greater rates of support for military actions as part of a more general “gender gap” phenomenon in U.S. politics, but the cumulative evidence has suggested that foreign policy issues and questions of peace/ war generate the widest and most consistent gender gaps (see Holsti 2004, 209-10 for a review). © The Women and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association, 2017.