Scholarly work has found that there is a consistent gap in political campaign activism between men and women. One potential explanation, grounded in social psychology, is that women have greater exposure to disagreement and resource disparities, which makes them less likely to participate politically. In new research, Paul A. Djupe, Scott D. McClurg, and Anand E. Sokhey examine social networks and political participation over time, finding that while women can be less likely to campaign if exposed to political disagreement, this effect is not consistent over time. They also find that access to social expertise – usually from men – can help women to overcome the effects of resource disparities on their political activity

Djupe, Paul A.

McClurg, Scott D.

Sokhey, Anand E.

LSE Research Online

3/29/2017Exposure to discussion and disagreement does notdiscourage women from political participation any morethan men.blogs.lse.ac.uk /usappblog/2017/03/29/exposure-to-discussion-and-disagreement-does-not-discourage-women-from-political-participation-any-more-than-men/Scholarly work has found that there is a consistent gap in political campaign activism between men andwomen. One potential explanation, grounded in social psychology, is that women have greaterexposure to disagreement and resource disparities, which makes them less likely to participatepolitically. In new research, Paul A. Djupe , Scott D. McClurg, and Anand E. Sokhey examinesocial networks and political participation over time, finding that while women can be less likely tocampaign if exposed to political disagreement, this effect is not consistent over time. They also findthat access to social expertise – usually from men – can help women to overcome the effects ofresource disparities on their political activity.Looking at American politics across the last half century, scholars have consistently found that thereis a gender gap in campaign activism (how much people participate in political campaigns). Figure 1illustrates this, drawing on the American National Election Study time series.  As we can see, theaverage number of activities people engage in has varied by campaign, but the gap between menand women has seldom closed. The gap did close to an insignificant level in 2004 and 2008, but itreopened in 2012. It is against this backdrop that we consider the different roles that socialnetworks may play in shaping the political activity of men and women. Given the social psychologyof gender, social exposure to disagreement and expertise should affect men and women differently.We find that despite theories to this effect, such exposure to disagreement does not consistentlyaffect women’s political participation, but that access to social expertise in their political networkscan help women to overcome the negative effect of resource disparities.Figure 1 – The consistent gender gap in campaign activism in American politics, 1960-20121/5Note: The ANES summary measure includes giving money to a party or candidate; displayinga button, sticker or sign; work for a campaign; attending a rally; and attempting to influencesomeone.Research from across the social sciences has observed different social psychological profiles for men and women,though not all of this work is in agreement or necessarily consistent. For example, some have argued that womenspeak with a different, more caring and nurturing voice than men’s, perhaps rooted in differences in childdevelopment. Some have suggested that women are more likely to “tend and befriend” – rather than engage in “fightor flight” – when subjected to stress. A number of studies have demonstrated that women are more conflict avoidantand tend to give fewer opinions (which can be seen as another way of avoiding conflict).Consistent results have been documented using the “Big 5” inventory of personality, on which men tend to scorehigher in assertiveness and openness to ideas, whereas women tend to score higher on agreeableness,extraversion, openness to feelings, and anxiety. Important for motivating our inquiry, the traits on which womenscore higher – especially agreeableness and extraversion – are just those that would predict sensitivity to socialpressure. Personality differences between men and women have also been found to affect such things as earnings,helping to explain wage gaps across decades. One of the mechanisms found to affect wages is the differentialexperience of men and women in negotiations, which jells with findings concerning women and conflict avoidance. It is little stretch to link these ideas to political activity.Given that these are fairly well-supported ideas, we found it surprising that research about the effects of socialexposure to disagreement on political activity has not considered gender more often. In fact, some of the most citedworks on network disagreement and political activity do not engage in a discussion of gender. If women tend to2/5register as more conflict avoidant and more agreeable (to use two closely linked concepts), then we might expectthat they would react to social exposure to interpersonal disagreement in ways that would reduce dissonance. Thatis, interest and engagement in politics should decrease in response to exposure to disagreement in social networks.In new research, we focused on these ideas using several familiar studies of the American public. And, as it turnsout, several well-known results concerning social networks and political participation are hiding gendered patterns. Figure 2 shows that there is not an even effect of disagreement across the population – instead, women aredemobilized by disagreement (relative to men) in a way that is consistent with the aforementioned literature.However, we found that these results from 1992 were not upheld in other years. In fact, in 1996 and 2008, we foundevidence that men were particularly demobilized by disagreement (relative to women). In none of the years of ouranalysis was there a consistent effect across the sexes, which suggests that a simple application of socialpsychological work to political action is not appropriate.Figure 2 – Women are demobilized by social exposure to political disagreement  Note: Reexamination of the results of Mutz 2002, using the 1992 Cross-National ElectionStudyOf course, the importance of social networks for political activity is not limited to disagreement; networks also supplymore or less high quality information that can subsidize the costly search for opportunities to participate (and thechoices that individuals need to make). Since women have suffered from resource disparities (wage discrimination,and – at least until very recently – more restricted access to/obtainment of higher education), they have tended tohave fewer politically-relevant resources than men (i.e., income and education).3/5However, if women can borrow the network of a “strategic partner,” they can still gain access to participatoryresources.  Looking again at these data sets, we found evidence of such “social subsidizing.”  Figure 3 highlightsone of these findings: that social access to “expertise” in their political networks returns special benefits to women.Without access to expertise (left side of the graph), women participate at lower levels given their resource deficits.However, with more expertise in their networks, women’s political activity becomes indistinguishable from men’s.This effect was consistent across the three years of data (each with somewhat varying study designs) we examined.One thing we would note about this process is that since so many of these (perceived) experts – at least in thesedata sets – are men, the observed pattern raises additional questions about advocacy and voice.  It would be hardto imagine that information exchange with “experts” in networks would not come with social influence/bias. However, this notion has also received little attention from those who study interpersonal political networks.Figure 3 – Social access to expertise helps women’s political activity rates become equal to men’sNote: Reexamination of the results of McClurg 2006 using the 1996 Indianapolis-St. LouisstudyThe degree of polarization among political elites, compounded by the rise of “fake” news, has raised grave questionsabout the health of democracy at the grassroots of American politics. A robust citizenry should be able to acquirehigh quality information, withstand exposure to/engage with disagreement, and convey views to government throughvarious modes of political activity.  Against this back-drop, the good news is that Americans still talk across lines ofdisagreement, and in these (now slightly older) data sets we see little evidence that any demobilizing effects areowned by any one group.4/5Our results cast doubt on any blanket social psychological theory of political activity. Instead, going forward wewould stress that there are social logics for men and women that do not line up neatly with “gender psychologies.”We are reminded that we need to think about differences within groups, and are sensitive to concerns aboutstudying “men” and “women.”  Still, if we take past literature on its terms (and are willing to overlook some over-simplification), we see that despite expectations that women might step back in the face of interpersonaldisagreement, we find a part of American society that is equally resilient and able to draw on available information tocommunicate with government.This article is based on the paper “The Political Consequences of Gender in Social Networks,” in the British Journalof Political Science. An online appendix with supplementary discussion and analyses is available here. Original dataand do files sufficient to build working data files and replicate the analyses are available at the Harvard Dataverse.Image credit: We the people by Alice Donovan Rouse from UnsplashPlease read our comments policy before commenting.           Note:  This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of USAPP – American Politics and Policy, nor ofthe London School of Economics.Shortened URL for this post: http://bit.ly/2o9Va85 _________________________________ About the authors Paul A. Djupe  – Denison UniversityPaul A. Djupe, Denison University Political Science, is an affiliated scholar with PRRI and the serieseditor of Religious Engagement in Democratic Politics (Temple). He is the editor of Religion andPolitical Tolerance in America: Advances in the State of the Art (2015) and coauthor of God Talk:Experimenting with the Religious Causes of Public Opinion (2013). Further information about hiswork can be found at his website, religioninpublic.blog, and occasionally on Twitter.Scott D. McClurg – Southern Illinois University-CarbondaleScott D. McClurg, Professor at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, holds joint appointments inPolitical Science and Journalism. His general areas of research focus on political communication,campaigns and elections, public opinion and voting behavior, and American politics.  He haspublished numerous articles in journals such as the American Journal of Political Science, theJournal of Politics, Public Opinion Quarterly, and Social Networks, and is currently an editor of thejournal Research & Politics. Anand Edward Sokhey  – University of Colorado at BoulderAnand Edward Sokhey is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Colorado atBoulder, where he is the associate director of the American Politics Research Lab, and the incomingdirector of the LeRoy Keller Center for the study of the First Amendment. Anand specializes inAmerican politics, and his work examines the role that social influence plays in voting behavior,political participation, and opinion formation.  He has published articles in journals such as theAmerican Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, and Journal of Politics.Copyright © The Author (or The Authors) - Unless otherwise stated, this work is licensed under a CreativeCommons Attribution NonCommercial Unported 3.0 License.5/5

Exposure to discussion and disagreement does not discourage women from political participation any more than men.

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