Mechanisms That Affect Support for Women Policies among Latina and White Women

• In Event: An Exploration into Gender's Behavioral and Policy Implications

Abstract

In the U.S., collective efforts to secure women’s rights have been historically marked by tensions between white and minority women. The literature suggests that women of color feel that the different iterations of the women’s movement are not responsive to the unique issues that affect them as doubly disadvantaged individuals. Despite feeling this way, women of color still actively engage in efforts to address gender inequality, suggesting a strong sense of political efficacy. In this paper, I explore the degree to which perceived responsiveness and perceived group efficacy facilitate the effect of intersectional awareness on support for pro-women policies. To accomplish this, I conduct two survey experiments: one with a sample of 500 Latina women and one with a sample of 500 White women. Participants first answer a set of demographic variables. Then, they get randomly assigned into one of two conditions: a race-neutral condition and a race-salient condition. In both conditions, participants answer the same set of items designed to measure perceived responsiveness and perceived group efficacy. The only difference between the two conditions is that the items in the race-salient condition explicitly acknowledge the racial/ethnic group of the participant (e.g., Most women in the women’s movement do not care what [Latina/White] women like me think). Then, participants self-report their attitudes towards pro-women policy proposals. I hypothesize that perceived responsiveness has a positive indirect effect in the White women sample (H1), while I expect it to have a negative indirect effect in the Latina sample (H2). I expect perceived group efficacy to have a positive mediating effect in both the Latina and the White women sample (H3). And lastly, I hypothesize that the race-salient models have a better fit than the race-neutral models in the Latina sample, and I expect that the race-neutral models to have a better fit than the race-salient models in the White women sample.

Author

• Bianca Vannessa Vicuna, University of California, Davis