Gradational Gender, Nonconformity, and Social Attitudes

• In Event: Sociology of Sex and Gender Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 2. Measuring Gender Beyond the Binary

Abstract

We build on prior work showing that the conventional binary measure of sex often falls short in predicting sociopolitical attitudes and examine how much explanatory power gradational measures of gender add, as well as whether this added value holds across various topical domains and for both women and men. Using the 2024 General Social Survey, we construct a gradational measure of gender nonconformity based on respondents’ self-rated femininity and masculinity and predict a total of 100 sociopolitical attitudes across nine domains (e.g., politics, gender and family, immigration and nationalism). We find that gender nonconformity is a powerful and consistent predictor of liberal attitudes, outperforming the conventional binary sex category as well as other key sociodemographic characteristics (e.g., race, sexual orientation, and education) across a range of domains. These patterns hold for both men and women, offering convincing evidence of the value of gradational measures that go beyond the gender binary.

Authors

• Soocheol Cho, Indiana University-Bloomington

• Guangquan Shen, Indiana University-Bloomington

• Brian Powell, Indiana University-Bloomington