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  5. A Century of the American Woman Voter: Sex Gaps in Political Participation, Preferences, and Partisanship since Women's Enfranchisement

Journal of Economic Perspectives

ISSN 0895-3309 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7965 (Online)

A Century of the American Woman Voter: Sex Gaps in Political Participation, Preferences, and Partisanship since Women's Enfranchisement

  • Elizabeth U. Cascio
  • Na'ama Shenhav
Journal of Economic Perspectives
vol. 34, no. 2, Spring 2020
(pp. 24–48)
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Abstract

This year marks the centennial of the Nineteenth Amendment, which provided American women a constitutional guarantee to the franchise. We assemble data from a variety of sources to document and explore trends in women's political participation, issue preferences, and partisanship since that time. We show that in the early years following enfranchisement, women voted at much lower rates than men and held distinct issue preferences, despite splitting their votes across parties similarly to men. But by the dawn of the twenty-first century, women not only voted more than men, but also voted differently, systematically favoring the Democratic party. We find that the rise in women's relative voter turnout largely reflects cross-cohort changes in voter participation and coincided with increasing rates of high school completion. By contrast, women's relative shift toward the Democratic party permeates all cohorts and appears to owe more to changes in how parties have defined themselves than to changes in issue preferences. The findings suggest that a confluence of factors have led to the unique place women currently occupy in the American electorate, one where they are arguably capable of exerting more political influence than ever before.

Citation

Cascio, Elizabeth U., and Na'ama Shenhav. 2020. "A Century of the American Woman Voter: Sex Gaps in Political Participation, Preferences, and Partisanship since Women's Enfranchisement." Journal of Economic Perspectives, 34 (2): 24–48. DOI: 10.1257/jep.34.2.24

Additional Materials

JEL Classification

  • D72 Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
  • J16 Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
  • K10 Basic Areas of Law: General (Constitutional Law)
  • K16 Election Law
  • N42 Economic History: Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation: U.S.; Canada: 1913-
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