August 2022 Gender & Politics Newsletter
Research on the gender gap in climate change attitudes, the effects of the timing of births on voter turnout, and messaging about norms on LGBT rights
We hope you all are enjoying the last few weeks of the summer before the Fall starts again. We are wishing you all a great start to Fall 2022 and hope to see many of you at APSA!
- Annabelle and Bhumi
Sarah Bush & Amanda Clayton. 2022. Facing Change: Gender and Climate Change Attitudes Worldwide. American Political Science Review.
Sarah Bush and Amanda Clayton have a new paper out in the APSR which makes several notable contributions to the political economy and politics of climate change literature.
Firstly, the paper establishes that the gender gaps regarding concern for climate change vary across countries in a systematic way with respect to economic development. Bush and Clayton use new and existing surveys covering 60 countries to show that - while women tend to express more concern regarding climate change in wealthier countries, this gap does not exist in poorer countries. Figure 1 from Bush and Clayton (2022):
Why is this? Bush and Clayton’s proposed argument is best explained in a few steps.
First, the authors argue that the perceived benefits of climate change mitigation decrease with economic development, while the perceived costs increase. This implies that those in poorer countries will express more support for climate change mitigation than those in wealthier countries.
Secondly, the authors argue that men will perceive greater material and psychological costs associated with mitigation than women, particularly in wealthier countries.
When it comes to the material costs - (1) men are more like than women to be employed in carbon-intensive and extractive industries, (2) men’s consumption in wealthier countries tend to have more carbon-intensive than women’s, and (3) men in wealthier countries are more likely to be sensitive to the collective costs of climate change mitigation than women.
When it comes to the psychological costs of climate change mitigation, the authors discuss that - (1) eco-friendly behaviors are often perceived as feminine in wealthy countries and (2) when the perceived costs of climate action are high (as they are viewed in wealthy countries) men are less likely to support climate change mitigation if mitigation policies will fundamentally reshape the economy and men’s current social dominance in the economy and society.
Taken together, the authors argue that the perceived costs (vs. benefits) of climate change mitigation increase with economic development more for men than for women.
Figure 3 from Bush and Clayton (2022):
Cindy Kam, Sara Kirshbaum, and Lauren Chojnacki. Forthcoming. Babies and Ballots: Timing of Childbirth and Voter Turnout. Journal of Politics.
Are individuals less likely to vote if they have a newborn baby? Are new mothers less likely than new fathers to vote? Kam, Kirshbaum, and Chojnacki (Forthcoming at JOP) link birth data with voter file data in California for the 2016 Presidential election to show that, yes - individuals are less likely to vote if they have a newborn baby and that mothers are particularly less likely to vote following the birth of a newborn.
The authors further show that the high prevalence of vote-by-mail in a county (which may indicate norms and the accessibility of vote by mail in each county) can ameliorate the demobilizing effects of a birth for mothers.
The authors use voter file data from California and obtain birth records data via applications with the CA Department of Public Health and the CA Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects (CPHS).
Figure 1 from Kam, Kirshbaum, and Chojnacki below:
Lyon, Nicholas. 2022. “Value Similarity and Norm Change: Null Effects and Backlash to Messaging on Same-Sex Rights in Uganda.” Comparative Political Studies.
Do improvements in legal norms for LGBT+ groups from similar contexts change individual attitudes? In this paper, Lyon conducts a survey experiment informing Ugandan respondents about LGB rights and perceptions in African vs. European countries. Ugandan respondents consider social norms from African countries to be similar to theirs compared to norms from European countries, so theoretically learning about LGB rights in Africa may change perceptions more than learning about these rights in Europe. The experiment’s geography is constrained; the 1029 randomly selected respondents come from 30 villages in one district of the country. To overcome the social desirability bias attached to asking sensitive questions, Lyon uses a variety of outcomes, results for which are summarized at the end. Overall, one-off messaging of norms from both African or European countries don’t shift the needle for any type of attitudes. The authors note implementation challenges during the survey, which may partly explain the null effects. Another interpretation may be that in places with very negative priors about groups such as in this setting, messaging from other settings may not be very effective in shifting these priors.