The Social Policy Gender Gap among Political Elites: Testing Attitudinal Explanations

Scholars of political elite behavior have documented a strong link between gender and social policy focus among politicians. In the electoral, legislative, and governmental arena, female politicians give higher priority to social policy matters. While this gender gap is well-documented, it is less well understood. Using measures of campaign issue emphasis as a dependent variable, this paper tests three attitudinal explanations: issue salience, ideology, and partisanship. Surprisingly, none of these predictors reduces the gender gap in campaign emphasis. These results suggest that there may be little attitudinal basis for the behavioral gender gap in social policy among political elites.