THE POLITICS OF GENDER

...It's contrary to the Republican philosophy...

...Peace has always been important as a women's issue...

...The answer seems to be "something else...

...A seven teen-point spread can't be ignored, regardless of any reservations we may have about the accuracy of public opinion polling...

...Women, she believed, saw the world in ways formed by experiences that diverged from those of the dominant sex...

...Within a year, the party had held a national convention in Washington and mass meetings all over the country, and some 165 party affiliates enrolled 40,000 or more women...

...As a rule, women have not identified themselves as expendables who can be called upon to fight, kill, and die for tribe or nation...

...The 1980 Presidential election was the first since female suffrage to show significantly different voting patterns between men and women...

...On the first day of the invasion of Grenada, fewer than 50 per cent of the women surveyed but fully two-thirds of the men supported the Reagan Administration's move...

...On the other hand, to ignore data that turn up consistently in the public opinion polls and mass media would also be irrational...

...Still, World War I split the women's movement...

...Similar divisions persist to this day...

...Kathleen Francovic, director of surveys for CBS News, confirms that regardless of age, education, or socio-economic status, a gender gap persists on issues involving resort to force, war, and aggression...

...One finds it, for example, in the disproportionate representation of women in peace movements...

...But the "gender gap*1 discourse of these last few years inevitably focuses on the attitudes of women...

...This latter group is offended, or at least troubled, by any suggestion that there may be real and important differences between the sexes and that it may not be desirable to eliminate all such differences, particularly if uniformity is achieved by calling on women to conform to male standards and roles...

...In her research, women tend to stress attachment, affiliation, empathy, and interdependence, while men tend to stress competition, independence, separation, and formal rights...

...One additional explanation is proffered by Carol Gilligan's work on moral development...

...On issues usually cited as explicitly feminist, there is little difference in the reported opinions of men and women...

...Only 34 per cent of women as compared with 51 per cent of men approved of the way Reagan was handling his job...

...Women have often assigned themselves a painful stake in preventing war...

...Nonetheless, the peace tradition is real and strong...

...In 1979, Eleanor Smeal, then president of NOW, declared, "Peace is not a woman's issue...

...Women have served as military wives, camp followers, and home-front helpmeets supplying the material base for the pursuit of war...

...Yet the existence of the gender gap may indicate that the traditional attitudes of women are not incompatible with their new identities...

...Gilligan maintains that both clusters of values are needed if we are to attain rich private and public lives and a more decent society...

...Perhaps women will be able to form the heart of a constituency that seeks a politics of compassion but steers clear of the destructive and narrow moralisms that have in the past accompanied aid to the less fortunate...

...It is in their capacity as mothers or as protectors of vulnerable human life that women insist on condemning the use of violence...

...To account for the current politicization of women's "private" values, one must also acknowledge the broad social context in which women's voices have been legitimated by the women's movement...

...In the words of social scientist Frances Fox Piven, "There is not much match...

...It hinges on those questions and concerns that have historically been regarded as traditional female values—peace and social welfare...

...At the moment, slightly more men than women favor abortion rights, and this has been the case since the beginning of opinion surveys on abonion...

...Francovic writes: "In the 1980 election, the difference in the way men and women cast their ballots could be entirely eliminated by controlling for the willingness of men to be more aggressive in foreign policy, even at the risk of war...

...Over time, the gap on abortion has narrowed...

...Gilligan insists that women have a "different" moral voice...

...To be sure, women involved in such efforts were never able to prevent war or to have significant impact on the sort of peace that followed...

...The gender gap extends a pattern established long before the Reagan Administration took office...

...writes frequently on issues of social policy...

...Women's voles in 1980 largely followed party lines and showed little change from 1976: Jimmy Carter received 45 per cent, Ronald Reagan 47 per cent...

...In fact, though, the most prominent components of the liberal feminist agenda-abortion and ERA—do not figure in the gender gap, which is identified mainly with antimilitarism and social compassion...

...But so far, as Elizabeth Cady Stanton observed, the masculine element has held full sway and the female voice has been muzzled in the counsels of power...

...In 1919, an International Congress of Women condemned the Treaty of Versailles for creating discords and animosities that would bring future conflict...

...The organization's version of equal-opportunity feminism held sway: In a friend-of-the-court brief filed with the Supreme Court of the United States as part of a challenge to the requirement that young men register for the draft, NOW argued that military participation is essential if women are to gain equality and first-class citizenship...

...Admittedly, there is no dearth of examples of militarist mothers, of women who have goaded men into battle or chided men who refused to fight...

...Is it a reaction, as some feminists and many Republicans insist, to the President's stand on the Equal Rights Amendment or abortion...

...Indeed, they are divided as to whether the question should be put at all, fearing that any evocation of some moral good in "female thinking" may lock women into predetermined social roles...

...Questions of social compassion and social responsibility are inherently and inevitably complex...

...Women, for a change, are in the picture, speaking up and being heard, rather than out of the frame, silent spectators...

...The polls tell us nothing about the reasons for the view held, of course, and these may vary widely from group to group...

...Political observers took immediate notice...

...The point here is that pro-choice and ERA politics, central to liberal feminism and the policies of the National Organization for Women, do not explain the existence of a gender gap or the issues on which it is founded...

...Most Nineteenth Century suffragists hoped that when women achieved full citizenship, they would transform the political arena into a forum of civic and pacific virtue...

...But it is noteworthy that even in wartime, a significant number of women have been prepared to take a stand and endure a campaign of popular vilification...

...Nothing of the sort has ever shown up before in Gallup surveys of Presidential approval...

...We need to know much more about how men and women define politics, how they perceive the role of citizen, what issues they want to address, and what methods they deem appropriate...

...Other issues that can be identified with the gender gap—nuclear power, the reduction of social welfare benefits, capital punishment, environmental pollution—are consistent with the values associated with caring, protecting, nurturing...

...There is a powerful tradition that assumes an affinity between women and nonviolence...

...Male defections from Carter left him with only 36 per cent of the total vote, while Reagan won S3 percent...

...These are the traditional "private" values of women, yet they are increasingly brought to bear on public issues and as...

...If the positions women endorse—on nuclear power, militarism, Reaganomics— all mesh with the understanding of women's moral reasoning that emerges from Gilligan's work, women are left in a bind: We can assume that women's values and modes of thinking are not biologically intrinsic to the sex, but they must be rooted in something...

...To some women—and to some feminists—Woolf s observations ring true, or at least seem plausible...

...It's exactly contrary to the Reagan philosophy...

...The gender politics I have in mind would flow from the issues women themselves identify as central to their concerns: peace and social compassion...

...In 1915, in the face of enormous public pressure, Jane Addams and other progressives and pacifists formed a Woman's Peace Party...

...With respect to the ERA, a New York Times/CBS poll last year found more men—about 2 per cent more—than women favoring the amendment...

...This debate, which pervades women's studies and feminist politics* is essential background to a consideration of the current "gender gap " There is little doubt that a gap of some son exists, but no consensus has been reached on its dimensions or importance, on its potential for affecting pubJean Bethke Ehhtam...

...These initiatives, in turn, can coalesce into a more general critique of the direction and purpose of contemporary American society...

...Again, there are historic precedents, most notably among women reformers of the Progressive Era, who saw politics as "housekeeping" on a wider scale and argued for the application of "domesticity" to public life...

...more women have adopted the pro-choice position, bringing them closer to the view many men have expressed from the start...

...Let me be clear: I do not visualize some grand, universal army of women on the march...

...Perhaps the most important long-range effect of the gender gap will be an increase in our understanding of how political and social identities are formed...

...This finding cannot provide much comfort to those White House officials who concluded, according to a report in The Washington Post last September, that the gender gap is "not President Reagan's problem" but a Republican Party problem brought on by the anti-Republicanism of "Jewish women, black women, and feminists...

...According to the polls, 18 per cent fewer women than men believe the United States should be "more forceful" in dealing with the Russians, and 13 per cent fewer women than men approve of increased military spending...

...Moral problems for women arise from conflicting responsibilities, she suggests, whereas for men they tend to arise from competing rights...

...One could make the argument that it was the men whose 1980 voting behavior really should be explained...

...between the largely middle-class constituency of the [women's] movement and the cross-class constituency of the gap, or between the issues emphasized by the movement and the issues highlighted by the gap...

...A few years later, the question of women and military conscription sharply divided NOW...

...In the first wave of shock over the killing of more than 200 U.S...

...It appears," Francovic observes, "that whenever Ronald Reagan's name is mentioned in a survey question, there are significant sex differences, with women clearly more negative...

...public imperatives...

...It seems that women's stronger identification with peace and social compassion has been brought to the fore by Ronald Reagan's candidacy and Presidency...

...Or is something else going on...

...But tradition and precedents do not suffice to explain why women in the 1980s vigorously and persistently declare their opposition to militarism and to the withdrawal of social welfare entitlements...

...It's the liberal agenda...

...If an essential part of that something is women's traditional social identities, does it not follow that as women take on more and more "male" roles, they will increasingly reflect more competitive and warlike values...

...Last August, for example, TheSew York Times, reporting on Gallup Poll findings, noted that Reagan's job performance rating had declined by five full percentage points in July and that the drop "was caused almost entirely by a loss of confidence on the pan of women, among whom the President suffered an eight-point decline from the June poll...

...Tt would be Tolly, I suspect, to pin on women all of one's hopes for a defeat of Ronald Reagan and a subsequent resurgence of social reform...

...Many more women fear the likelihood of nuclear war and mistrust Ronald Reagan's ability to keep the peace...

...One Reagan aide was quoted as calling the gender gap "the Bella Abzug agenda," adding, "These women are talking ERA, but they are really committed to more social spending, cutting defense spending, making concessions to the Soviets in arms talks...

...Accepting compulsory military service as central to the concept of citizenship in a democracy, NOW spokeswomen contended that the all-male draft turned on "archaic notions of women's role" and that women would suffer "devastating long-term psychological and political repercussions" as a result of exclusion from the military...

...But if one eliminates the constellation of concerns linked to war and willingness to use force, little remains of the gender gap...

...On what issues, then, is the gender gap based...

...Women may become active public citizens on the basis of long-cherished "private" or religious values and, in the process, help create a vision of public life that is more attentive to the needs of the vulnerable, the weak, the very young and very old...

...From 1948 to the early 1970s, the main difference between women's attitudes and men's, as reflected consistently in public opinion surveys, focused on such issues as military conscription, amnesty for draft resisters, the arms budget, Vietnam withdrawal, and capital punishment...

...But men showed a significant shift to Reagan, and it was this change in male voting patterns that highlighted a gender gap...

...Marines in Lebanon last fall, an ABC News poll indicated that 62 per cent of American women but only 34 per cent of men wanted the Marines brought home...

...a professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst...

...To other women and feminists, her argument is merely a celebration of female marginality that leads into a "separate but equal" trap...

...I do see hundreds of grass-roots initiatives in which women take direct part...

...Women embodied an alternative consciousness...

...Half of all women interviewed in May [1983] said they feared Reagan would get the United States into a war...

...It is an open question, and feminists are split on the answer...

...But the arresting question is why why are so many women consistently giving Reagan negative ratings...

...Yet "archaic notions of women's role" appear to figure significantly in women's commitment to peace...

...Ultimately, the focus is bound to be on the militarist structures central to the state in our time, but the stirrings of protest must begin "at home...

...Social welfare often has a double edge, entailing both assistance and control from the top, fostering not autonomy but dependence...

...by a margin of 2-to-l, men thought he wouldn't...

...One can begin to envision a gender gap evolving into a gender politics that forges new and creative coalitions uniting women—and men—previously divided by race, class, or their positions on ERA and abortion...

...in which civil rights and peace movements have brought moral questions to politics...

...in which women can no longer anticipate a world where they will be protected and provided for...

...lie policy and political action...

...Right now, men and women seem to be about evenly divided on ERA...

...After much debate, the National Woman Suffrage Association endorsed the war effort...