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Exploring the Gender Gap: A Data-Driven Learning Guide

Goal & Concept

Goal

The goal of this exercise is to explore the differences between men and women with respect to public opinion in areas important to political decision-making. Crosstabulation, Chi-square statistics, comparisons of means, and t-statistics will be used.

Concept

In political science literature, the gender gap refers to gender-based differences in public opinion, party preference, and vote choice. Research suggests that men and women differ when making political choices; specifically, women tend to identify with the Democratic Party more often and tend to be more ideologically liberal. As a result, women tend to have more liberal policy preferences than men.

Some research questions concerning the gender gap are:

  • What factors lead women to identify more with the Democratic Party?
  • How do men and women differ with respect to issue attitudes and policy preferences?
  • Can the ideological and political differences between men and women be explained?

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CITATION: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research. Exploring the Gender Gap: A Data-Driven Learning Guide. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2009-04-16. Doi:10.3886/gendergap

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ICPSR is part of the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan.