Studium

Women’s Issues, Women Voters, And The Phenomenon Of Democratic Women In The United States Senate

Although they account for over half the population of the United States, American women traditionally have been underrepresented in government. Not only are government institutions dominated by men, but the issues which government addresses are often also dominated by a male perspective, to the extent that some issues which are important to women are marginalized and overlooked. However, in recent years--notably since the 1992 elections--the number of women who serve as senators has grown considerably. And although the work of some political scientists (Koch 2000) has predicted that Republican women should be more successful in attaining elective office than Democratic women, because of the ideological distance between liberally-perceived women candidates and the mainstream voting public, in actuality the majority of women who have served in the Senate are Democrats. This suggests that there is something particular to Democratic women candidates which makes them attractive to voters. Since women are more predisposed to vote for a female candidate than men are (Kahn 1994), it would seem to suggest that this element is particularly attractive to female voters.

Because of this correlation between the female voter and the female candidate, I will restrict my research of the problem to females. What makes women vote for Democratic women candidates? I think that the phenomenon of Democratic women senators has its root in the underrepresentation, not necessarily of women elected officials, but more primarily of women’s issues in government. This underrepresentation is naturally of more concern to women voters than to male voters, who may not even notice the discrepancy. The advantage of Democratic women over Republican women suggests that Democratic women are, either naturally or by design, more successful at representing women’s issues and thus drawing female voters in as their supporters.

In this research problem, the independent variable is the vote of American females for female Democrats who run for the Senate. The dependent variable is the issues which the Senate candidates espouse. It is my contention that there is a direct causal relationship between these variables: if women’s issues are prominent in a candidate’s campaign, that candidate will garner a significant portion of the female vote. I think there is a high correlation between Democratic issues and women’s issues, and that this correlation explains the success of female Democratic senators.

This research proposal will consider other political science research in the area of gender, issue salience, and elections. It will then outline a hypothetical process for testing the relationship between women’s issues, the issues of Democratic female Senate candidates, and those candidates’ success at securing the female vote. Finally, it will consider the theoretical and policy implications of that relationship in order to suggest a more equitable representation of the views of American women in government institutions.

For some time now political scientists have been interested in gender as a factor in election outcomes. Much research has explored the advantages or disadvantages which candidates encounter, in everything from press coverage to election fortunes, because of their gender.

One important distinction in my study is that women voters are voting for female Democratic Senate candidates because of their gender, not because of their party. A previous study of the 1992 Senate elections offers important insight on this point. The 1998 American Journal of Political Science study by Kathleen Dolan found that women voters were attracted to women candidates in 1992 because of gender-related issues. Dolan found that women running for the Senate in that year made their gender a central part of their candidate identities and a main part of their campaigns. From her study, she concluded that voting for women was a phenomenon separate from voting for Democrats. Dolan cited demographic and issue variables, not party membership, as the important factors influencing the election of women.

Dolan’s research raises an interesting point. It seems to illustrate the fact that party identification is not a significant factor which influences the support for female candidates, and yet there is a clear advantage for Democratic over Republican women in Senate elections. The research does not address this advantage. Obviously, despite Dolan’s conclusions, party identification is playing some kind of role in the election of women senators, and this is something for which an explanation is lacking.

Earlier research offers a partial explanation for why women voters are attracted to women candidates, again disregarding the candidates’ party. Voters employ stereotypes in deciding which candidates to support, and these stereotypes result in more favorable attitudes towards women candidates (Kahn 1994). According to Kahn, the stereotypes focus on and value “female” traits like compassion, and they lead both men and women to view women Senate candidates as more honest and capable of dealing with women’s issues--but Kahn points out that these issues, like education, health, and social programs, are not normally addressed by the Senate. Kahn concludes that although the stereotypes make women appear more favorable to voters, they do so by highlighting attractive qualities which are nevertheless relatively meaningless in senatorial campaigns, so women senatorial candidates remain at a disadvantage.

Kahn’s article begs the question, why are issues which are important to women so completely disregarded by the Senate? Perhaps if women candidates emphasize the qualities which voters appreciate in them at the same time as stressing the issues which require those qualities as assets, they can overcome the disadvantage which Kahn attributes to them.

Other research indicates that issues salient to women do indeed influence the support for women candidates. Both men and women believe that women are more competent to deal with these issues; but only women think this is something to consider when voting (Paolino 1995). This makes sense; men have less at stake if women’s issues are ignored by government. Paolino’s article offers a strong argument that the election of women to office depends largely on their ability to muster support among female voters. Again, this research fails to explain why Democratic women are more successful than Republican women. Since it presumes that gender is the key factor which controls the importance of these issues, why is the success rate in the Senate not more or less equal for both Democrats and Republicans?

Some research does attempt to tackle the party discrepancy. Plutzer and Zipp (Plutzer and Zip 1996) found that identity politics--i.e., women making their gender an important element of their campaign--can erode party-line voting to some extent. It was their conclusion that most women candidates run as Democrats, and that because they stress women’s issues, they garner support from women voters. They predicted that if more women ran as Republicans, the gender gap (greater support from women for Democrats versus Republicans) would decrease. This research, like other examples, seems to underestimate the importance of the party. It assumes that women, regardless of which party they identify with in an electoral race, will all espouse basically the same issues and thus have a relatively equal chance at winning the support of female voters.

I disagree that party plays a negligible role in the phenomenon of women voting for women. If this were the case, Democratic women would not enjoy such a distinct advantage over Republican women in the ranks of the Senate. Previous research has made the mistake of assuming that women candidates of either party place importance on issues which are important to women en masse. Although basic issues can be said to be important to the large majority of women voters in the American public, this generalization cannot be extrapolated and applied to individual women candidates for Senate. Senate candidates are more politically educated than the average American woman, and so it follows that their opinions on important issues are more complex and diverse than the opinions of the aggregation of American women. Although it may be true that the vast majority of American women think the right of a woman to an abortion is an important issue, this is not necessarily the case for a Republican woman Senate candidate. Research of female support for female candidates must take this into account.

I hypothesize that the opinions held by the majority of women in the American voting public on issues of particular importance to women are best reflected by Democratic women Senate candidates, and, thus, those candidates garner the most support for their electoral bids from the female voting public.

In order to test my hypothesis, I will devise a survey to test the views of women voters on several issues which are labeled as women’s issues and how that affects their vote for women Democrats running for the Senate. I will conduct my survey by randomly selecting 1500 women from the national registry of voters. I will mail my survey to these 1500 women in order for them to respond. The first part of the survey will present the subjects with a list of issues (abortion, military spending, social welfare spending, and public education). In the first case, the survey will ask whether the subject supports or opposes legal abortion. The following questions will ask whether the subject supports increased or decreased attention and budgeting for the other three issue areas. Four last questions will ask the subject to rank each issue’s importance from 1 (very important) to 5 (unimportant).

Next, the survey will present both a stereotypically liberal and a stereotypically conservative view of each issue (ex: Abortion should be available on demand; Abortion should be made illegal) and ask the subject to identify each statement as a view of either the Democratic or the Republican Party. The subject will then be asked, for each particular issue: Given the option, I feel my views on this matter would be best represented in the Senate by (1) a Democratic male, (2) a Democratic female, (3) a Republican male, (4) a Republican female, (5) any Democrat, or (6) any Republican. While these options are not necessarily realistic in a true election situation, the respondent’s choice when given these hypothetical options will be a good indicator of how she thinks she would be best represented in an ideal situation of government.

I expect that approximately 1000 of the surveys which I send out will be mailed back to me, allowing for a sufficient sample size. In analyzing my data, I expect to find that a majority (two-thirds) of women have liberal views on the four issue areas--they support legal abortion, oppose military spending, support social welfare spending, and support spending on education. I expect the majority of women to rank each issue as a 1 or 2 in importance, except for military spending, which I expect to be ranked as a 4 or 5. (Note: the typical views of women on military spending may be skewed if my survey is conducted too soon after September 11, 2001, when Americans are abnormally supportive of military action.) Additionally, I expect that the majority of subjects will equate the liberal view with the Democratic Party and will go on to indicate a preference for a female Democratic Senator to represent them. This scenario will offer proof for my hypothesis that women voters feel they are best represented by women Democrats.

Even if the support for women’s issues and a female Democratic Senator are only marginal (51 percent), my hypothesis will still carry some weight since candidates need only a simple majority to win office. If the support for women’s issues correlates to support for any Democrat rather than for a woman Democrat, then my hypothesis that there is something in particular about women Democrats which is attracting voters will have no support.

If the majority of respondents indicate views opposing abortion, supporting military spending, and opposing education and social spending, and indicate that the most important issue to them is defense spending, my hypothesis will be difficult to prove. Undoubtedly, these same respondents would identify these views as Republican and would probably indicate a preference for either a Republican male or any Republican to represent them in the Senate. This finding would show no correlation between women’s views and the views of Democratic women candidates, so my hypothesis would lack any kind of support.

The hypothesis would also lack support if there was such variation between views of different women as well as between a particular woman’s view and the view of the party she supported that no firm conclusion could be drawn from the collected data. This scattering of responses would tend to indicate that something other than gender, salient issues, and even party identification is at work in influencing female voters.

If the results are what I expect, and a correlation is found between the issues women espouse, the issues they attribute to the Democratic Party, and their preference for female Democratic Senators, my hypothesis will be supported. If this is the case, more research into this question is required. The idea that the ideological distance between voters and Democratic women candidates is increased because of the stereotype of liberal women should be revisited; perhaps, more importantly, the corresponding idea that the ideological distance between voters and Republican women candidates is decreased because of that should be revisited as well. Obviously, something is hindering Republican women in their quest for public office. Further research should seek to find what that hindrance is.

Also, further research should more fully explore the question of gender. If the issues espoused by women Democrats are what draws female voters to them, then could male candidates garner the same support by espousing the same issues? Future studies should seek to determine whether this is actually a gender phenomenon or a phenomenon purely of issue representation.

At the policy level, this study has important implications for both major parties as well as for candidates. It demonstrates clearly that Democratic women are advantaged with female voters for the Senate. The Democratic Party should use this study to determine which issues it should prioritize and which candidates it should nominate in order to keep the support of underrepresented women in society. It can also use the study to help male nominees win the support of the female voting block by guiding them in adapting their campaigns to include some key women’s issues.

The Republican Party should use this study to better serve women in its own ranks who may be defecting to support Democratic women candidates because their own party has not paid attention to the issues about which they care. Or, the party could focus on the minority of women who want their conservative views to be represented and use the information in the study to build a conservative female coalition. Either way, the party can use this study as a marker of the importance of specific issues to the female voting public.

For both parties, the study is an important strategic tool to use in upcoming elections. For individual candidates, the study suggests that perhaps both men and women can benefit from the female vote if they espouse women’s issues which have been marginalized. Independent or third party candidates could also learn from the study which issues are more or less apt to garner support or at least attention for their campaign efforts.

Although women are poorly represented in American government, of even greater concern is the underrepresentation of women’s views in politics. Significant research has been done in the area of gender and politics, especially since the 1992 Senate elections when an unprecedented number of women joined the ranks of Congress. However, as my proposal suggests, perhaps political scientists would now be better served to look beyond the isolated variable of gender and focus instead on the ideas and opinions which it represents. If female voters are supporting women Democrats, as I suggest, because those Democrats emphasize the issues the voters prioritize, then it would seem that female voters would be equally willing to support male candidates or candidates of alternate parties as long as the issues remained at the forefront.

While the demographics of American government are certainly one area of some concern, the issues with which government deals are vastly more important. Thus, the motivation behind female voting support for female Democrats, rather than the mere fact that women are supporting women, should become of primary importance to political scientists as well as politicians.

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