I'm Not with Her: Gender Strategies Employed by Politically Conservative Women

• In Event: 4322 - Section on Political Sociology Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 09. Conservatives and Right-Wing Politics

Abstract

In the current political climate there has been abundant media speculation surrounding how conservative women think about their gender identities in combination with their political orientation. Journalists and lay people have appeared surprised that Republican women continued to support political candidates that express negative or misogynistic attitudes and behaviors towards women. Some people have questioned whether politically conservative women struggle to identify as conservative given their own gender identity. In order to understand how women conservatives conceptualize and combine their gender and political identities, I am conducting semi-structured interviews with conservative women in the Bay Area in addition to attending conservative events in the Silicon Valley, such as speaker events put on by conservative groups, and Republican women’s lunches. Interview topics include questions about their political affiliation, involvement in politics, views about current political events, as well as gender identity, and gender in politics, and women’s own lives. Preliminary results suggest that for conservative women, rather than viewing their political and gender identities as in conflict with one other, these two identities are equally important and strongly held at the same time. It appears that conservative women are able to simultaneously affirm their gender identity and conservative principles by subscribing to gender essentialism, or the idea that men and women are different in many important ways including their interests and behaviors. Through gender essentialism, women can identify strongly with their gender, but also fit within conservative political beliefs. These findings have important implications for the intersection of gender and politics within the United States.

Author

• Lisa Marie Hummel, Stanford University