In abstract, she wrote, “The extra ‘masculine’ a person is, the extra probably she or he is to affiliate with the G.O.P. and vote for Republican Occasion candidates.” Whatever the intercourse of the person, McDermott argued, “the extra ‘female’ traits an individual possesses, the extra probably that particular person is to affiliate with, and vote for, the usually ‘female’ ” Democratic Occasion, including that “‘femininity’ and ‘masculinity’ function the identical method in women and men, defying conventional analysis.”
Actually, McDermott noticed that “as soon as gendered personalities are accounted for, the long- standing intercourse hole in partisan preferences disappears.” She described what she calls a “femininity dimension” primarily based on measures of such traits “as understanding, sympathetic, heat, loves kids, compassionate, mild, keen to appease harm emotions, affectionate, delicate to wants of others and tender” and a “masculinity dimension” primarily based on measures of such traits “as prepared to take dangers, forceful, robust persona, assertive, unbiased, management potential, aggressive, dominant, prepared to take a stand and defends personal beliefs.”
Utilizing these measures, McDermott notes that males, as anticipated, are larger within the “masculinity dimension” and that girls are larger within the “femininity dimension.” Extra considerably, McDermott stories, there are massive numbers of women and men who don’t match the stereotype: 41 p.c of males rating above the median on the femininity dimension and 35 p.c of girls rating above the median on the masculinity dimension.
Whereas “the intercourse distinction in Democratic leanings is 9 factors,” McDermott observes that there are
a lot bigger gaps in relative occasion identification amongst totally different gendered personalities. On the femininity dimension, these with scores above the median stage of femininity establish with Democrats greater than Republicans by 23 factors, whereas these beneath the median on this scale are one level extra Republican than Democratic — an total 24-point hole in relative occasion identification between low femininity versus excessive femininity. On the masculinity dimension, these with a larger variety of masculine traits present solely a three- level benefit in Democratic affiliation, in comparison with much less masculine people who show a 21- level Democratic benefit — an 18-point hole by masculinity.
Over the previous 50 years, McDermott notes, there was a radical shift in public attitudes on the position of girls. She cites altering outcomes on a ballot query that
asks whether or not ladies ought to have an equal position, or whether or not their place is within the house, on a 1- to 7- level scale. Increased values point out a extra conventional position angle. As the information present, conventional position attitudes — at the least towards ladies — have dropped considerably, shifting from a populace nearly evenly divided in opinions in 1972 (3.5 level common) to 1 clearly in favor of an equal position for girls (1.8 level common) in 2008.
On the identical time, McDermott writes, “males’s possession of each masculine and female persona traits has elevated. Each sexes are actually, on common, extra probably than previously to own the persona traits of the intercourse position reverse the one as soon as dictated to them by custom.”
Alongside parallel strains, Roland Levant, a professor of psychology on the College of Akron, famous in reply to my emailed question that there’s a “relationship between males’s and girls’s conventional male ideology and their endorsement of conservative political ideology.”
Conventional male ideology, Levant and 5 colleagues wrote of their 2021 paper, “The Politics of Males’s and Ladies’s Conventional Masculinity Ideology in the USA,” is “notably evident by way of endorsement of hegemonic norms that condemn any ideas, emotions, and behaviors for males that may very well be thought of female.” Maybe most importantly, Levant and his co-authors discovered that there was no gender hole between the political opinions of these women and men who favor conventional masculine ideology: “Ladies who believed that males ought to usually keep away from historically female behaviors (e.g., be robust, stoic, dominant and hypersexual) have been equally more likely to endorse conservative political ideology as males who endorsed the identical beliefs.”
Supply: NY Times