Erin C. Cassese

All Along the Watchtower: Acculturation Fear, Anti-Latino Affect, and Immigration

In this article, we consider how the factors driving Anglo attitudes toward immigration changed in the post-9/11 era. We argue that in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the immigration issue became nationalized, framed in a threat context. In this context, acculturation fear and anti-Latino sentiment are strong predictors of restrictionist sentiment; in the pre-9/11 period, these factors have little substantive impact on Anglo attitudes. We theorize that the current climate has helped ‘‘activate’’ social identities, which in turn has deleterious consequences for the Latinos in the United States. Using data from the 2000 and 2004 National Election Studies, we estimate a model of Anglo immigration attitudes. We show indicators of acculturation fear, anti-Latino sentiment, and media exposure significantly relate to Anglo immigration attitudes in the post-9/11 period but not the pre-9/11 period.

Political Women and American Democracy: Gender, Public Opinion, and Political Reasoning

Men and women differ in their political attitudes and behavior, but these differences are modest and inconsistent (Sapiro 2003). The much-discussed gender gap in voting choice and partisan preference in which women identify more strongly with the Democratic Party and give greater electoral support to Democratic candidates is real, persistent, and consequential. However, it is also modest in size, with women and men differing in their support for Democratic presidential and congressional candidates by 8 to 10 percentage points on average. This difference is small compared with other political differences across demographic groups such as race, in which the gap in vote choice between blacks and whites is closer to 40 percentage points (Tate 1994). There are also small or inconsistent differences between men and women in many areas of public opinion, leaving researchers to analyze various “gender gaps” of differing origins, in addition to many areas of public opinion in which there are simply no such differences (Schlesinger and Heldman 2001). In reality, men and women both differ and converge politically in interesting ways that deserve the scrutiny of empirical researchers (for a similar point about differences between male and female politicians, see Reingold, this volume). Differences between men and women are slight, but that does not necessarily neutralize their political power. A difference of even 8 to 10 percentage points can determine the outcome of elections because women represent a larger segment of the voting population than do men.

Racializing Gender: Public Opinion at the Intersection

Efforts to understand the political implications of categorical prejudices—like racism and sexism—are complicated by the intersectional nature of social groups. Evaluating attitudes toward members of a single social category (e.g., African-Americans) in isolation can produce misleading conclusions, as racial cues commonly coincide with gender cues and create meaningful subgroups (McConnaughy and White 2014). The idea that different subgroups of women experience distinctive forms of discrimination is reflected in the concept of “double jeopardy.” Double jeopardy suggests that black and Hispanic women experience discrimination differently from white women or men of color because they simultaneously belong to a low-status gender group and a low-status racial/ethnic group (King 1988; Levin et al. 2002; cf. Sidanius and Veniegas 2000). As a result, women who are racial or ethnic minorities face a cumulative discrimination that extends beyond racism or sexism alone (King 1988; Purdie-Vaughns and Eibach 2008).

Integrating Gender into the Political Science Core Curriculum

The New Research on Gender in Political Psychology Conference brought together new and experienced teachers with interests in gender politics. The conference session “Teaching Gender throughout the Curriculum” generated a great deal of discussion concerning the pedagogical practice of gender mainstreaming. Gender mainstreaming—the integration of gendered content into courses required for a major—was recognized as one of 11 recommendations for reforming the undergraduate political science curriculum in the 1991 APSA report “Liberal Learning an The Political Science Major: A Report to the Profession” (popularly referred to as the Wahlke Report). Little information is available on the prevalence of gender courses in the undergraduate curriculum, but the data that does exist suggest such courses are uncommon (Brandes et al. 2001). We found virtually no data on the practice of gender mainstreaming in political science and little data in the way of assessing the impact of gendered content when students are exposed to it. This absence of data suggests gender mainstreaming has not emerged as a serious priority for curricular reform.

Socially Mediated Internet Surveys: Recruiting Participants for Online Experiments

The Socially Mediated Internet Survey (SMIS) method is a cost-effective technique used to obtain web-based, adult samples for experimental research in political science. SMIS engages central figures in online social networks to help recruit participants among visitors to these websites, yielding sizable samples for experimental research. We present data from six samples collected using the SMIS method and compare them to those gathered by other sampling approaches such as Amazons Mechanical Turk. While not representative of the general adult population, our SMIS samples are significantly more diverse than undergraduate convenience samples, not only demographically but also politically. We discuss the applicability of the method to experimental research and its usefulness for obtaining samples of special, politically relevant subpopulations such as political sophisticates and activists. We argue that the diversity of SMIS samples, along with the ability to capture highly engaged citizens, can circumvent questions about the artificiality of political behavior experiments entirely based on student samples and help to document sources of heterogeneous experimental treatment effects.

Whose American Government? A Quantitative Analysis of Gender and Authorship in American Politics Texts

American government textbooks signal to students the kinds of topics that are important and, by omission, the kinds of topics that are not important to the discipline of political science. This article examines portrayals of women in introductory American politics textbooks through a quantitative content analysis of 22 widely used texts. We find that textbook coverage of women is scarce, tends to disregard important sources of diversity among women, reinforces traditional gender roles, and gives scant attention to women as political actors. Typical presentations of women thus reinforce womens status as political outsiders, mirroring their marginalization in American political life. We argue this content depresses interest in the academic study of political science and engagement with American political life more generally. However, we find that textbooks with one or more female author have significantly more gender-related content. Female political scientists better integrate gender into their textbooks and, thus, may be more likely to engage female students, who are underrepresented in the political science major.

American Party Women A Look at the Gender Gap within Parties

Research on the gender gap in American politics has focused on average differences between male and female voters. This has led to an underdeveloped understanding of sources of heterogeneity among women and, in particular, a poor understanding of the political preferences of Republican women. We argue that although theories of ideological sorting suggest gender gaps should exist primarily between political parties, gender socialization theories contend that critical differences lie at the intersection of gender and party such that gender differences likely persist within political parties. Using survey data from the 2012 American National Election Study, we evaluate how party and gender intersect to shape policy attitudes. We find that gender differences in policy attitudes are more pronounced in the Republican Party than in the Democratic Party, with Republican women reporting significantly more moderate views than their male counterparts. Mediation analysis reveals that the gender gaps within the Republican Party are largely attributable to gender differences in beliefs about the appropriate scope of government and attitudes toward gender-based inequality. These results afford new insight into the joint influence of gender and partisanship on policy preferences and raise important questions about the quality of representation Republican women receive from their own party.

Building a Gender and Methodology Curriculum: Integrated Skills, Exercises, and Practices

In this article, we develop an argument for better integrating the political science curricula on methodology with gender politics. We demonstrate how these two areas are presently distinct and nonoverlapping with an analysis of commonly used methodology and women and politics textbooks. We examine the implications of these results for female students’ engagement with political methodology—an area in which women are persistently underrepresented—by drawing on research from STEM educators. Stereotype threat (Steele 1997; Steele and Aronson 1995) provides a framework for thinking about the myriad of ways the curriculum influences learning outcomes for female students and highlights the utility of greater crossover between the two subject areas. To facilitate better integration of methodology and gender politics, we identify opportunities for instructors to incorporate methods into courses on gender and gender into courses on methods. We also develop a number of different in-class activities and resources to help faculty to bridge the gap between gender and methodology.

A Reexamination of Women’s Electoral Success in Open Seat Elections: The Conditioning Effect of Electoral Competition

ABSTRACT This article reexamines gender differences in electoral outcomes. We consider whether electoral competition has a differential impact on the electoral fortunes of male and female quality candidates. This study uses an original data set containing detailed candidate information for US House open seat primary and general elections between 1994 and 2004. The results indicate that when multiple quality candidates enter the race, female quality candidates are at a greater disadvantage than their male counterparts. The results suggest that null findings from previous work are a product of the way the relationship between gender and electoral outcomes is typically modeled.

Religion, Gendered Authority, and Identity in American Politics

Religious identity serves as a central cleavage in American politics. However, little attention has been granted to how gendered views of authority conveyed in religious doctrine shape political identities and attitudes. Using a nation-wide sample of adult Americans, we demonstrate that gendered notions of divine and human authority exert considerable influence on political thinking. In particular, belief in a masculine God and preferences for traditional gender roles strongly relate to political conservatism. Adherence to gendered notions of authority influences political identity and policy preferences, even when controlling for more conventional indicators of religiosity. Accounting for gendered beliefs about authority also partially explains well-documented gender gaps in American politics, providing insight into womens apparently contradictory tendencies toward both political liberalism and religiosity. The relationships uncovered here, coupled with the continued salience of both gender and religion in contemporary political campaigns, underscore the importance of attending to the gendered dimensions of authority.