Alaska isn't the first place you'd expect to see a woman elected to higher office. With its harsh climate and reliance on traditionally male-dominated industries like fishing, mining, and oil extraction, it has the most male population in the country: 106 men for every 100 women. Things are a bit worse still for the guys on Alaska's single scene -- the ratio of unmarried men (15 years or older) to unmarried women is 114:100. Throughout the rest of the United States, the men have it a bit easier, as the ratio is 86:100 nationally.
And yet, Alaska is one of just five states to have elected a female governor -- the irrepressible Sarah Palin. One of its two Senators, Lisa Murkowski, is also a woman.
But Alaska is a quirky state, and presumably this is highly irregular behavior. Except that -- it really isn't. Although women are still having a relatively tough time getting elected in general -- they represent just 17 percent of the members of the U.S. Congress -- Congresswomen, as opposed to Congressmen, are more plentiful in areas where the male-to-female ratio is higher.
I have a database containing the names of 535 members of the Congress -- 435 Representatives plus 100 Senators -- as well as a bunch of demographic information on their states and districts. Of these 535 geographies, 91, or about 17 percent, elected a woman at their last opportunity. (A couple of methodological notes: state-level observations are deliberately double-counted, to represent the two senators that each state has. I also look at the identity of the person who was last elected in each geography, so if someone has since resigned their seat in the Congress, I'm still counting as holding their seat unless there has already been a special election held to name their replacement.)
The chart below lists the 25 most male "districts" in the country (from here forward, I will refer to state-level observations on the Senate side as "districts" in addition to actual congressional districts from the House side), along with the 25 most female districts. The female office-holders are highlighted in red.
Nine of the 25 most male-dominated districts (36%) most recently elected a woman to office, as compared with 4 of the 25 most female-dominated districts (16%). This alone is somewhat interesting -- however, it actually conceals the strength of the relationship because female-dominated districts are more likely to vote Democratic, and Democratic-leaning districts are more likely to elect women to office regardless of their sex ratios. Let's look, for instance, at what's happening only in strongly Democratic districts, which I define as those with a PVI of D+10 or higher:
The most male-dominated from among these strongly Democratic districts elected women in 10 out of 15 instances. The 15 most female districts elected just 3 women.
Next, moving to moderately Democratic districts with a PVI of between D+3 and D+9.
A less impressive result here: 3 of the 15 most male districts elected women, as compared with 4 of the top 17 most female districts. (Note that we include 17 districts rather than 15 on the gals' side because there's a three-way tie between Delaware's two senate seats and its one U.S. House seat in 15th place).
Next up are the swing districts:
Just two of the 15 most male swing districts -- IL-8 and NV-3 -- elected women. But women were shut out in the 15 most female-dominated swing districts.
Moving on to lean Republican districts:
Once again, it's the more male districts that are more inclined to elect women to office.
Lastly, the strongly Republican districts:
Same story here. Among the 15 most female districts, only OH-2, which reelected the inimitable Jean Schmidt, sent a woman to Congress. All told, after controlling for the district's partisan affiliation, male-dominated districts were more than twice as likely to elect a Congresswoman as were female-dominated districts.
We can generalize this result by means of a logistic regression analysis. This is the estimated probability of electing a woman to Congress based on the sex ratio in three types of districts: a strongly Democratic one, a strongly Republican one, and a neutral one.
Note that, although the pattern manifests itself regardless of the partisan affiliation of the district, it is strongest in Democratic-leaning districts and weaker in Republican ones.
What I don't have for you is a ready explanation for this seeming paradox. What's especially perplexing is that although the sex ratios differ some from district to district, they don't differ all that much. In the most male district in the country, CA-20, about 54 of every 100 people you'd encounter on the street will be a man, as compared with 45 of 100 in the most female district, Philadelphia's PA-2. Unless perhaps you were specifically looking for a marriage partner, you might not notice those discrepancies. For that matter, I recently moved from the fifth-most male district in the country, IL-4, to the second-most female, NY-11. I couldn't in good conscience tell you I had any idea about that until I looked up these statistics.
Nevertheless, I cross-checked at least a dozen different demographic variables in addition to the sex ratios, such as race, income and educational status; none of them were statistically significant once the sex ratio of the district was accounted for. There is also no doubt as to the statistical significance of the effect; we are more than 99.9 percent certain that it isn't the result of chance alone.
It's possible, and maybe even somewhat likely, that there is some sort of latent variable affecting both the sex ratios and elections to the Congress that I haven't accounted for. If this really is being driven by the sex ratios, however, and it's being driven in this extremely counterintuitive way, it's one of the more fascinating things that I've come across. Perhaps in male-dominated areas, women are more likely to violate traditional sex roles including something like running for political office, which has traditionally been a male-dominated occupation -- the Sarah Palin frontierswoman caricature works well here. It would be interesting to know whether there more women actually running for office in male-dominated areas, or rather, whether they are winning more often when they do run. Or perhaps this is a phenomenon that goes beyond politics, and career growth is retarded for the dominant gender when there is an insufficient number of the opposite one. Or perhaps there is even something more Freudian: a lack of female companionship (or vice versa) triggers a yearning for it that is manifested in the way we vote.
6.07.2009
The Palin Paradox: Women More Likely to be Elected in Male-Dominated Districts
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Women see through Paln. Men are more likely to be pussy whipped. Sad but true.
You didn't mention controlling for region of the country. Eyeballing the data makes it seem like that west of the Mississippi is more male but also more likely to elect women. Correlation, of course, doesn't imply causation. It's quite possible that there's some leftover "frontier" ethic in the western half of the country that has something to do with both trends.
I'd be very curious if the pattern shows up at all if the data is limited to east of the Mississippi.
"And yet, Alaska is one of just five states to have elected a female governor..."
I'm pretty sure the count is higher than this. There are more than five current women governors (AK, AZ, CT, MI, HI, WA, NC).
There's a fairly simple possible explanation. Most men are attracted to women, and most women are attracted to men. They may be slightly more inclined to vote for someone that they find attractive. I would think that is almost definitely a subconscious driver, but it could be there.
I'd be curious if you broke it down by how each gender is voting. Are both men and women more likely to vote in this pattern, or do men consistently favor women (slightly) and thus when there are more men, the women are more likely to win -- or perhaps vice-versa, do women consistently favor voting for men (slightly), and thus when there are more women, a man is more likely to win.
There's a economics argument that explains this phenomenon: scarcity drives up worth.
Men are more likely to treat women better when there are fewer women than men, because otherwise they will be on the outside looking for a partner. Likewise, when there are more women than men, women are more likely to allow themselves to be treated poorly.
My suspicion is that a paucity of women in a certain area will cause both men and women to have a higher regard for women in general, and therefore be more likely to vote for one.
Nate:
You've got Barbara Mikulski's name spelled "Milulski" in the Moderately Dem. chart.
"Or perhaps there is even something more Freudian: a lack of female companionship (or vice versa) triggers a yearning for it that is manifested in the way we vote."
Just what I was thinking, as soon as I saw the title. Or was that your intent? :)
Age is a possible explanation.
Women tend to live longer than men: therefore the average age of a female voter is slightly higher than the average age of a male voter. So we should expect that districts with a higher proportion of women would also in general be slightly older. And older voters may have more old-fashioned ideas on the role of women in public life, hence be less willing to support female candidates.
There is an interesting parallel in these numbers to the adoption of women's suffrage, which happened first in western frontier states where women were scarce, starting in Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_suffrage_in_the_United_States.
I think the whole men being more likely to vote for women if there are less of them around thing is somewhat true. It makes some sense. You might want to check some of the heavily male districts though - they seem to be in heavily Mexican areas and you might have a lot of unregistered voters.
As a guy, I know now I will never move to Alaska. Looks like Massachusetts, western PA and Long Island are much better.
You said (in paragraph 2) that "Alaska is one of just five states to have elected a female governor".
There actually have been 18 states that have elected a female governor in her own right. (AK-Palin in 2006, AZ-Napolitano 02, CT-Grasso 74, DE-Minner 00, HI-Lingle 02, KS-Finney 90, KY-Collins 82, LA-Blanco 03, MI-Granholm 02, MT-Martz 00, NE-Orr 86, NH-Shaheen 96, NJ-Whitman 93, NC-Perdue 08, OR-Roberts 90, TX-Richards 90, VT-Kunin 84, WA-Gregoire 04)
The number goes to 23 if you count the wife/widow of a previous governor or a lieutenant that rose to the office. (AL-Wallace in 1966, MA-Swift 01, OH-Hollister 98, UT-Walker 03, WY-Ross 24)
Eight states that were "red" in 2008 have voted a woman into the top office at some point (add 2 that were "red" in 2004 but "blue" in 2008).
What's interesting to me is what the heavily male districts have in common with each other, and likewise what the heavily female districts have in common with each other.
The heavily male districts tend to be somewhat more Hispanic than average, perhaps because -- and this is pure speculation -- more of the immigrants coming across from Mexico into these districts are male.
Meanwhile, the heavily female districts tend to be more urban and African-American than average. Again, just speculating, but this could be because in those districts men often die earlier or are in prison and are thus not counted in the district's population.
It's possible this explains the vote split. In areas with few men, perhaps people revert to traditional gender roles and look to men to be authority figures and set a good example. In any area with many men, this isn't as much of a concern and women can step up into those positions.
Nate,
What % of the vote is women versus male?
Also a rhetorical question, do you think men are likely to vote for a pretty women versus a male?
Remember most men ask women out on dates or propose marriage. I contend most men look at women candidates favorably.
Men not women are the weaker sex.
Texas had a female governor, too -- Ma ("If English was good enough for Jesus it's good enough for me") Ferguson. Who took over when Pa Ferguson was hauled off to the hoosegow.
(All those people Googling Ma Ferguson right about now.)
Are you controlling for primaries?
That is, could it be in more female dominated districts that multiple female candidates are more likely to run in the primaries -- and knock each other out?
(credit my very smart wife for this suggeston
Other people have said this already to some extent above, but seriously, Nate, I think you are backing into a region correlation here.
In other words: in the West, there are somewhat higher sex ratios of men to women, and in the West, there is more of a tradition of electing women to high office.
Its called the lonely male vote. Some guys are so lonely and pussy whipped (but are not getting any pussy) that they will always take a woman's side of any argument no matter how stupid it is.
This even has made its way into ELECTIONS. If Sarah Palin were a man she (he?) would never have made it to governor...or even mayor.
I remember hearing guys saying that if you did not like palin you were "gay". THIS is how pussy whipped our society is today.
I think a lot of this is due to California.
I would love to be ruled by an iron-fisted female dictator. I think that explains everything.
Before we try to ferret out some kind of root cause, we need to know if women in male-dense areas are getting elected because:
a) Men are ALWAYS more likely to vote for women, or
b) Voters (male and/or female) are more likely to vote for women in a male-dense area.
It seems like this is the next logical step, so, um... get on it Nate!
Nate, you should check out the exit polling and see how women voted and I bet you might find that the women were more strongly aligned than the men in areas with a higher ratio of men to women. Maybe they have a higher appreciation for a woman running for office?
WA has elected two women governor in three elections:
- Dr. Dixy Lee Ray in 1976.
- Christine Gregoire in 2004 and 2008.
I think the CA data are skewed by the virtual lock incumbents received in the '00 gerrymandering (oops, redistricting). A note on CA in particular. You need to control for the homosexual population in certain districts. Pelosi's immediately comes to mind, further Speaker Pelosi represents a district that includes a city wherein a moderate democratic is in effect, the candidate of the radical far right. As to Senators Boxer and Feinstein, a lot of their electoral success can be attributed to the recent Republican Party tradition of offering up a sacraficial lamb instead of a viable candidate.
Incumbency advantage is one of the most powerful forces in Congressional elections-- don't forget about it here. When were these congressmen/women first elected? Do districts on the East Coast and in the Deep South (those more likely to be majority-female, by the looks of these tables) tend to have longer-serving representatives than those in the West (those more likely to be majority-male)?
I'd suggest Barbara Palmer and Dennis Simon's book Breaking the Political Glass Ceiling for a look at how some other demographic factors influence the woman-friendliness of a district.
I'm nowhere near the first to say this, but a glance at the tables you made us, Nate, screams just one thing to me: We're less sexist out here in the West and Southwest.
I'm just a guy in WA who voted for Gregoire, Murray and Cantwell... surely we're the first state ever to elect a female governor to go with our two female senators?
Funny thing... their genders pretty much NEVER get mentioned. Just sayin.
To everyone who suggests that men are simply more likely to vote for a woman just because she's a woman...
What about Hillary?
The burning question here for me is how men and women are voting in these districts. Is just true, across all districts, that male voters are more likely to vote for a female candidate? If so, women may have an electoral advantage in male-dominated districts just by weight of numbers. It would be interesting to know how results of questions like "is America ready for a female president" break down by gender.
Also, I want you do explore the attractiveness suggestion above, just because I want to see you rate congress by hotness.
I thought it was one of those well-known political factoids—something I first heard 15, 20 years ago—that women are less willing to vote for female candidates? Of course like all all such well-known 'truths' it should be taken with a pinch of salt until you have some evidence for it, but it would certainly seem to fit with your data here.
I'm British btw, so I first heard this in the context of British politics, but there you go.
Normalizing to Longitude would be interesting here.
http://www.whiteband.org/media/gcap-news/mary-robinson-speaks-to-the-guardian
Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland, has made some interesting thoughts that relate to this.
I wonder if in conservative areas, women are better at portraying more masculine traits, whilst in liberal areas women portray more feminine traits, and get stomped on by masculine candidates? In time you may see feminine candidates having more success as the electorate gets more used to electing women.
IS AGE FACTORED IN?
It seems to me that the most female districts would also be the oldest -- southern Florida, for example -- because women live longer.
And older people are more likely to vote for men.
In all these stats, is the age of the people in the congressional districts, factored in?
Shalom,
ZWrite
Nate,
Thanks for this fascinating analysis which is just one example why I read your blog every day. But can you possibly explain this comment
“Things are a bit worse still for the guys on Alaska's single scene -- the ratio of unmarried men (15 years or older) to unmarried women is 114:100. Throughout the rest of the United States, the men have it a bit easier, as the ratio is 86:100 nationally
Presumably there are roughly an equal number of males versus females in America (at least to within +/- 5%) so how does this 86:100 statistic come about, if every married woman is indeed married to a man and vice-versa? I assume the recent advent of gay marriage in New England and Iowa is not really accounting for such a significant statistical difference and in any case I would expect there to be a roughly proportional number of gay male and female couples
Philip
Should you do a correction for nepotism? The senator from Alaska was named by her father. Perhaps Mary Landrieu has earned her position by now, but she also came from a strong political family.
Are there any current widows of previous office holders?
This reminds me of how Obama won all of those primaries in white dominated states and black dominated states, but did badly when the percentage of black people was in the 6% to 17% range.
Maybe when there aren't a lot of women, they aren't as threatening to men. But when there are a lot of them, they're taking jobs away from men and men are more resentful of them.
As others have said, the obvious next step is to see how each gender votes under the circumstances. A lot of us are trying to say how the man's view changes with different ratios, but it could be women driving the effect.
With Palin it was obvious that the guys liked her (not the women as much) and it was also obvious that a large part of that was sexual.
That Thatcheresque Sex Appeal...
Honestly, if you have SEEN some of these female congresswomen and senators, I kind of doubt that "female attractiveness" is the reason for success. Palin and a handful of others might be getting a lot of votes on sex appeal, but I doubt that is enough to account for the overall phenomenon.
I conclude the women are appealing to the politics of the electorate, not the libido of it.
The data suggests that it is easier for women to make their argument to males than to females, and to make those arguments on the left rather than the right.
The left (Democrats) are far more reasoned and egalitarian than the right, which is more doctrinaire, religious and emotionally driven.
I suggest that in the USA (and not by nature but by nurture) males are brought up to reject emotionally driven argument in favor of reason, and to accept the idea of meritocracy. I also suggest that males, by virtue of being dominant in society (evident in pay, leadership positions in industry and politics, etc.) are more tolerant of women in power if they got there by besting males in fair contest.
In other words, I think the modern male enjoys male dominance but isn't out to protect it; they want the best person for the job. If Kay interviews (or campaigns) better than Kevin, then too frikkin' bad for Kevin.
This gladiator mindset is shallow but effective. I think women project more of their own circumstance and experience with gladiator-males on female candidates. This leads to a faulty conclusion that in a male dominated society, a female candidate is less likely to be successful than a male candidate, so they vote for the male, because they have been conditioned by life to see males as more often victorious in high stakes situations than are women.
Women perceive sexism (both real and imagined) because they are the object of it, and while a lot of men are indeed sexist, I think the majority of us are simply callously pragmatic bottom-liners.
By analogy, I once consulted for a business in which the majority of the sales force were women. When I asked the VP of sales (a male) about that at lunch, he had noticed but didn't care. His response was basically that people that sell stay, people that can't sell are fired, and if that turns out to be 100% women or 100% men he doesn't care either way. He was results-oriented, he didn't care how they achieve their sales goals, just that they achieved them, and it turned out twice as many women as men survived this gauntlet for his product line.
I think politics are the same way; the more reasoned and male the population, the fairer it is to female politicians. I also think that female politicians are far less likely to be blustery or combative (Hillary excepted), which I think appeals to reasonable Democratic males as well. Democratic males are more likely to see politics as a game of negotiation and vote trading, not testosterone driven combat.
We're not pussy whipped, we just want somebody that delivers. It is the women voters that think the female candidate will be less effective in a male-dominated world, not the men.
Nate, this is really easy to explain in my humble opinion, anyone whoi has ever hung out with a group of women knows that women tend to be far more heavy handed in judging other woman than men. It's really that simple. Does not apply to all woman, as nothing applies to all of a group, but it is common enough and shown in enough polls to warrant discussion on a topic such as this.
SarahLawrenceScott is correct. For whatever reason, women are more concentrated on the east coast and men are more concentrated on the west coast. Remember that map that was circulating a while back, which showed an excess of single men in western cities and an excess of single women in eastern cities?
Region is the answer. The west has always elected more women, for a variety of reasons. Frontier living made it easier for women to become community leaders, since everyone had to contribute. This led to western states allowing women to vote much earlier, and to women getting elected to local, state, and national office much earlier than elsewhere.
Western states also have less dominant and controlling political parties, which tend to hurt female candidates' prospects. It's harder to get the nomination when there is literally an old boys club calling the shots. Parties in the west tend to be much weaker than the political machines in the east.
So everyone, please, stop with this idea that women are too bitchy to vote for women. It's insulting.
@Tony -
You argue that the male mindset and Dem voters are each more reasonable/pragmatic than their female/GOP counterparts. This is contradicted, however, by the fact that party affiliation and gender are strongly correlated, in the other direction.
To those of you making the "sex appeal" argument, don't forget that many social science studies have shown that attractive women find it harder to get elected than those of average looks. Apparently, a woman's beauty is negatively correlated with her perceived competence or intelligence.
With an attractive woman, her gender matters more. But with an unattractive woman, she can go toe-to-toe with the men and her gender isn't as much of an issue, unless she makes it one.
I looked at age and growth for the states on the first chart. The heavily male districts are faster growing and younger than the US as a whole.
Of the 25 most male districts, 20 of them are in states with a growth rate higher than the US as a whole, IL-04, NJ-13 and the Alaska seats being the exceptions. Of the 25 least male districts, every one of them were in states with a growth rate equal to or lower than the US as a whole.
Also, of the 25 most male districts, 23 of them had a percentage of the population over 65 lower than the US as a whole, AZ-04 and NJ-13 being the exceptions. Of the 25 most heavily female districts, 19 were in states where the percentage of population over 65 was lower than the US as a whole, the exceptions being IL, VA, LA and MD. Illinois represents 3 of these 6 exceptions, and it has a 65+ population of 12.1%, compared to US as a whole 12.6%.
My theory? In most of these districts, it's about growth. Young men are more likely to be the ones changing location, whether moving from a rust belt failed factory town, an abandoned ranch on the high plains, or a village in Guatemala. So, fast growth areas have a large number of young men. These are also the areas most likely to gain congressional seats, so the power of incumbency does not work for their representatives. Plus, a younger, more mobile population traditionally has, a less traditional lifestyle. I'm not talking about gays, but rather about things like lack of a social network and willingness to experiment or try new things. If you're willing to uproot your entire life to move a thousand miles to work at a farm in Fresno, an oil refinery in Houston or a casino in Vegas, maybe voting for a "chick" no longer seems so odd.
On the other hand, older, more slow growth areas have the more timid, set in their way voters who were left behind. West of the Mississippi there are old, established political legacies, whether in the form of actual incumbencies, political machines, old ideological movements or political families. Rush (Black Panthers), Jackson (Rainbow Coalition), Kennedy (a Kennedy), I'm looking at you.
Alaska breaks this pattern, being slow growth, but heavily male. A lot has been written on the weird demographics of Alaska, but suffice to say men move there to work, but not in large enough numbers to offset population losses as the native-born population either move to the lower 48 or ages itself to death. This gives a low growth rate, but an overall high percentage of people born elsewhere, and a political climate similar to very high growth states.
Illinois and New Jersey are the only states that appear on both lists. So using overall numbers from NJ, IL and the US as controls, what might be unusual about these gender imbalanced districts other than gender?
Geographically, all 4 of the IL districts are in Chicagoland, whereas a dozen of IL's 19 districts are not. Also, NJ's 2 districts listed here border one another in North Jersey (Essex and Hudson counties, splitting both Newark and Jersey City). That is, all the districts located in states with districts on both lists are representing the states' most urbanized areas. These would also be the areas where gerrymandering to create homogenous districts would be easiest. In these two states, it's about race based districting: some districts devoted to a slightly younger, slightly more male and greatly more hispanic electorate, and other districts devoted to a slightly older, slightly more female and greatly more black electorate.
65+% Poverty AfrAm Hispanic Male
IL-01 12.7% 19.7% 65.5% 4.8% 46.2%
IL-02 11.6% 15.2% 62.4% 10.4% 46.5%
IL-04 6.1% 20.2% 4.3% 74.5% 51.7%
IL-07 9.6% 24.0% 62.0% 5.8% 47.3%
NJ-10 10.9% 17.5% 57.7% 15.0% 47.0%
NJ-13 10.8% 18.0% 12.8% 47.6% 49.8%
US 12.4% 12.4% 12.3% 12.5% 49.1%
IL 12.1% 10.7% 15.1% 12.5% 49.0%
NJ 13.2% 8.5% 13.6% 13.3% 48.5%
Cook 11.7% 13.5% 26.1% 19.9% 48.4%
PS: I really hope this chart formats properly. I've never tried this before.
Arizona has had more female governors than any other state (four) and more consecutive female governors than any other state (three). Jan Brewer was appointed after Napolitano was appointed Secretary, so she hasn't been elected yet. Two were Democrats, two Republicans.
It's interesting that a state with a reputation of conservative politics in some arenas has been one of the most progressive in terms of gender equality in politics. I don't know the male/female ratio of AZ's population, but this analysis certainly puts an interesting spin on it.
Ooops, bad formatting.
IL-01, 02, 07 and NJ-10 are all heavily black and older. IL-04 and NJ-13 are both male and hispanic.
@graduallygreener:
It hardly explains anything to say "it has always been that way," and I seriously doubt the modern woman is influenced in the slightest by pioneer women that didn't hold office or vote, "community leaders" or not.
I prefer explanations that make sense with the living. Nate demonstrated a significant gender-based differential, and it is not an "insult" to woman to try and explain it by psychological differences in genders!
It is an academically documented phenomenon that female children are more judgmental and clique based than are male children; that male children are more physical than female children, that male children are more physically competitive and females are more socially competitive and gossipy than are male children. I don't care if that is nature or nurture, it is fact. My sister taught grade school for 16 years and will testify under oath to the facts.
It doesn't make a difference WHAT you call it, there is a difference in the way males and females perceive candidates, I believe Nate has documented the results of that.
A regional hypothesis does not explain anything; the region doesn't vote. People do.
Now it is possible that a region determines gender proportions, due to environmental hardships (like in Alaska, or a desert area) or working conditions (farming or ranching) that select for hardier males and fewer females. Men are statistically heavier and stronger than females (50% in upper body, 35% in lower body), with 30% larger lungs. This allows men to outperform women in physical jobs.
But while the region might drive the gender differential, it does not explain anything about why female candidates do better when there are more male voters than female voters. The region doesn't vote, the people in the region vote.
In other words, you explain nothing by saying "People in the west vote for women more than people in the east."
We can just as easily say, and just as factually, "Men vote for women more than women do."
Both are facts that require some explanation, but in the second there are proven differences in psychology between men and women, and in the attitudes of men and women toward men and women. Assertions about these attitudes on a regional basis are on much shakier ground.
@Tom:
I think I argue that Democratic Males are more reasonable and pragmatic than Democratic females, and Republicans.
The national correlations don't make a difference once we are talking about specifics; and I am talking about men we have already determined are Democrats, since we are talking about D+10 male-dominated districts.
Sorry to double dip, well triple dip, really, but found this which might be useful:
http://massinc.typepad.com/.a/6a00e54edff0c7883401053722b9bc970b-500wi
It's map showing percentage of people who live in a state, but weren't born there. Notice the east/west split.
Have you considered whether crowded primaries with multiple men and a single woman factor in?
Also, How many of the won districts involved woman vs. woman races?
Nosimplehiway -- Interesting analysis. Tying the growth rate to the influx of younger males makes sense, and a younger demographic being more inclined to ignore gender also makes sense.
Tony C is (unfortunately) right that women tend to be more judgmental of other women than men are.
Not to deny that there are plenty of misogynistic pigs who never want to see a woman accomplish anything, but women in general are more likely to criticize another woman for her choices, and more likely to be swayed by arguments about her "priorities" with regards to family vs. career. If female voters think that the candidate is a bad mother, they will have a hard time voting for her.
My personal (anecdotal) experience suggests that men are either one extreme or the other, either they can't imagine a woman in power or they don't care. Women tend not to be as extreme, but more in the muddled middle with conflicting views on womens' success. Women want to see other women succeed, but can be very judgmental of other womens' choices.
There's a whole lot of confounding factors one would have to control for to say much of anything about the gender gap and Congress.
Most of those "most male" districts are heavy on recent immigrants, in partiuclar from Mexico, who are disproportionately male. (There are a few exceptions apart from Alaska; a few districts that have an unusually high level of tech-sector employment also skew male. I wouldn't think gay men, who also tend to cluster with each other, would have any clusters big enough to show up here other than maybe the San Francisco of CA-8; if we were looking at smaller constituencies like most state legislative districts or something we'd probably have to consider gay male voting patterns.)
Most of those "most female" districts have a large African-American population. Sadly, there's often a shortage of men in such areas due to significant percentages of African-American males who die young or who end up incarcerated. (You'll notice nearly all the GOP-leaning districts in this category are in the South, which likely owe most of their female-skewing properties to the Af-Am portion of their electorate.)
I would imagine that other factors such as the average voter age and ethnicity would be bigger factors than counting up the number of males vs. the number of females.
Piggybacking on the acknowledgement of districts with more immigrants being more male, is it possible that there is a significantly lower male voting population in these districts? If you are using census data instead of voter data, this could have a significant effect.
I live in PA-2 and I never noticed this.
The gender correlation is interesting, but I wonder about other variables like rates of incarceration or violent crime being one of several factors causing a gender skew playing a role here.
Obviously employment is a big source of the gender bias, but perhaps this is really something like the 'father figure voting' here. Areas that have a drop in men from incarceration or violent crime (or flight for above reasons) might also show greater numbers of 'safety' voting which might culturally favor a men.
Would the pattern be different if those variable were pulled out? Are there two effects here or one?
Lots of good theories here, ranging from natural to environmental to purely coincidental reasons for this gender phenomenon. Could it just be that men tend to want "Mommy" running things and women tend to trust "Daddy" running things more so than the other way around?
Is Palin "Mommy" to Alaska? Or is she a different role--did Alaska males hire a stripper for a 4-year-long bachelor party? It would seem to me to be one or the other--the opposite sex is more appealing as salesperson either because they remind one of the opposite sex parent or of a love/sex interest.
Yes, I know it is a sexist comment to call her a stripper. If I had any respect for her professionalism, political decorum, aptitude, wisdom, bravery, honesty, competence or ideology, maybe her gender would fade into the background of my assessment of her.
Interesting article, but more than 5 women have been elected governor - there are more than 5 now (AK, WA, HI, CT, MI, NC, at least)
I agree that there are confounding factors. For the first chart, three (Pelosi, Eshoo, Lofgren) are from the San Francisco/Silicon Valley area. Silicon Valley is geek-heavy and the whole Bay is relatively flexible about gender norms. (I don't think that the presence of male homosexuals really shifts the gender ratio, as there are also a lot of lesbians in the area who will pull the M:F ratio down.)
As mentioned earlier, some of the districts are heavily Latino (like CA-53 and CA-34).
I suspect that M:F ratio actually is correlated with other, more important factors. However, they are *different* factors for each district (e.g. high education in one, high latino pop in another, low age in yet another).
Does the likelihood of women being elected to office correlate at all with the percentage of women working in historically-male-dominated fields within a district? A district that elects a women might also have higher numbers of women working in traditionally-male-dominated fields. This would probably affect people's view and acceptance level of women holding a powerful position and taking office.
Tony C., John, mclever, or anyone?
Could you please cite your sources supporting “women tend to be more judgmental of other women than men are”. Is this a real measured phenomenon or truthiness?
If this explained why more men are elected in the female-heavy areas, then wouldn’t the reverse --men tend to be more judgmental of other men-- explain the results in the male-heavy areas? Thanks.
Nate -
I think while you were taking into account small letter sex you forgot to factor in capital letter SEX!
Some women are extremely critical of their other women, especially when they perceive that other woman as being in a position of power. Sure they can be all smiles until their out of earshot and then the "I can't believe she had the nerve to wear those shoes with that dress!" comments come out. If you doubt me then the next time you're out eating in a resturant notice the difference how female patrons treat waitresses and waiters. As an ex-assitant Resutrant Manager there were many times I had to throw a waiter on a table to save the situation not because he was more talented but because the female patron was being abusive to the very qualified and professional waitress.
On the male side you can not discount horiness. I know a middle aged very intelligent democratic man who told me last fall that he wanted to vote for McCain because he wanted to have four years of looking at Sarah Palin in her high heels (I didn't ask) and that he wanted to screw her. I have to admit the logic behind his desire to have sex with Palin and his decision to vote for her escaped me given the fact that he is rather non-descript and if she had won she would be forever offlimits behind a wall of Secret Service - maybe he thought he could hook up with her at some sleazy DC bar once she became VP.
As a gay man I have to admit that I never saw the attraction to Sarah Palin - now Tina Fey on the other hand I find a sexy little minx. It's funny that the Christian Right like to paint the male gay community as sex-crazed animals but yet we don't seem to vote with our penises. Harvey Milk certainly wasn't a looker. God love Barney Frank but sex god he's not (having worked out at the same gym as he - and to say he sweats profusely is an understatment). George W Bush was a fairly attractive man, and certainly he was better looking than Gore or Kerry, but I certainly didn't vote for him for either election. His father cynically (I know that's redundant) picked the good-looking but very unqualified Quayle to shore up the female vote andI didn't vote for them either. Maybe I'm an outlier but I can only think of two public officials who get my blood racing - MD Gov O'Malley and SF Mayor Newsom.
DermottTrellis,
Here's just one study out of many:
Women more harsh
(Sorry if the HTML doesn't work right...)
I've also seen studies in political science journals that show women assess a female candidate's "competence" more harshly than men do. I wish I had the names of the authors handy for you. There may have been a study using ANES data, but I can't find a working link.
Also, psychology studies have long shown that women are more critical of other women than men are. Too many such studies have been published to begin listing them all.
Nate,
Maybe this trend has to do with the number of homosexuals (predominantly men) in each district.
@DermottTrellis:
I was referencing a sociological study examining group dynamics in high school and how males and females interact in cliques. I probably read it in New Scientist, Science News or Scientific American, those are my primary reading materials for scientific news outside my actual profession. Sorry I cannot point to a specific article, I don't have time to search for you.
The conclusion of the article I read was that high school girls gossiped more and were more verbally abusive and judgmental of peers than were high school boys. The female cliques were based on female status, largely derived from looks, dress, grooming and social success; the male cliques were more based on shared interests. For example, males from disparate economic brackets were more likely to be friends if they shared an interest, like chess or cars or video gaming, than were girls from disparate economic brackets that shared interests. Meaning, social standing was much more important to girls than to boys.
You are correct in saying the reverse could be true, that males are more judgmental of male candidates, but that does not seem to be the case in other fields like business or sports. In those fields, males tend to judge other males rather narrowly, based on their specific performance in the field.
I believe there is plenty of academic sociological evidence that men focus their judgment on performance for the job at hand, while women take a more holistic approach and judge people based on elements that may be irrelevant to the job at hand, such as dress, fitness, attractiveness and social status. In particular, I think women that experience a personal lack of social status in a male dominated work place may worry about a lack of social status (and therefore effectiveness) for a female candidate in a male dominated governing body.
On the other hand, if men are judging the candidates based on fitness for the particular job at hand, negotiation and selling of an agenda, there is no reason to think a woman cannot do this as well as a man. In fact, I and many of my gender are perfectly willing to admit that woman can negotiate and communicate better and longer than we can; and we are willing to give that job to whomever is best at getting it done, without caring what she looks like or whether she matches her scarf to her shoes. Frankly we never noticed if she was wearing a scarf OR the color or style of her shoes. We were focused on her rhetoric, not her choice of eyeshade.
So I know that doesn't answer your question, and you can reject my commentary if you want. I guess I am writing for people that share my interest in recent academic sociology and gender psychiatry and are already aware that these gender differences are established. If you are interested, you should be able to spend an hour on Google Scholar and find some relevant papers.
Given that the effect is stronger in more Democratic districts, is it possible that this has something to do, in particular, with Democratic men? Maybe Dem men are more inclined to jump party lines and vote for a Republican, if the Republican is female, on some kind of theory about Republican women being somewhat more moderate. (See: Snowe and Collins, Todd-Whitman, Hutchinson.)
Tony C,
Aside from just taking a more holistic approach, women tend to judge more harshly even when asked to confine their judgment to a specific area.
For example, when rating pictures on attractiveness, men and women both rate men similarly, but women tend to rate other women much lower than men do. In general, women are more critical of other women than men are, and men do not share this trait of being hypercritical of their own gender. Of course, there are exceptions, but we're speaking about broad trends.
Other examples are the studies with fake job applicants. Same resume, with a male applicant's name or a female applicant's name. Study participants are asked to rate the applicants, and while both men and women tend to rate the female applicant lower than the male applicant with the same resume, the scores for male participants are much closer than those for female participants who rate the female candidate much lower than a similarly qualified male. When asked why, women generally came up with questions about "life choices" as their reason for downgrading the female candidate. (Same studies done with obviously racial names instead of "boring" male/female names expose racial bias is harsher against male minorities than against female minorities, but that's a slightly separate issue.)
They've also done the applicant studies with interview segments, and they vary the dress and attractiveness of the female candidate. Attractive females who dress with "flattering" clothes are generally perceived as less qualified than their dowdy counterparts. Both men and women downgrade the qualifications of a "sexy" woman, and the gender differences in ratings were less pronounced than in the resume-only studies. (Apparently, men do care what she looks like. If she looks too pretty, then they assume she isn't qualified, but if she just looks average, then the men care less about her gender and judge only on qualifications.)
There was even a version of this study where the real test was the secretary who was handling the job interviews. The secretary varied in dress and attractiveness, and then the participants were asked (after rating the hypothetical job applicant) to also rate the secretary and his/her handling of the arrangements. If the secretary was an attractive woman wearing "flattering" clothes, then she was assumed to have been less competent and rated lower than the male secretary or the less-attractive woman. Even the exact same woman dressed conservatively was rated as more competent than when she dressed stylishly. But, there was a catch-22... If she dressed too shabbily or was perceived as ugly, then she was rated as incompetent, regardless of how well she actually performed the job.
So, it's not entirely simple, but there is plenty of evidence that women rate other women more harshly than men rate women (or other men). But, if the woman is too attractive, then both men and women tend to rate her poorly in terms of competence or qualifications.
One of the reasons the republican male-dominant districts don't show the bias is military bases. I'll bet you a lot of those republican strongholds are military bases where there's a lot of republican men who may be less inclined to vote for a woman than a typical republican male. If you factored out the military populations of these bases you might see less of an interaction than now, and all three PVI groups would show the same male-female effect.
Maybe age correlation. Woman outlive men, so in many cases a low M:F ratio is a reflection of a larger aging population. We know there is a strong political:age correlation, where older people vote more conservatively.
Can you account for the age of the populations?
Wyoming was also the first state to have a female governor and the first to ratify the ERA. But, riddle me this, BatMan...
why has Illinois had 75% of the African American senators since Reconstruction? 75%. Seems statistically significant to me...
I'm wondering why a district would be more female or more male in the first place. Alaska, OK, I get it, but other than that babies are born about 50/50% in either direction and people tend to couple heterosexually (I can see why, though, Nancy Pelosi's district is more male than female).
someone mentioned age, and that's one idea. Women live longer and those districts might just have more old people, and old people are more likely to vote for men (perhaps).
Also, I'm thinking prison. Are your numbers about the adults who are male or female in each district or the eligible voters who are male or female? I know that in quite a few southern states people lose the vote for life if they go to prison... don't know about other states. Could people who live in authoritarian parts of the country that send lots of people to prison, or at least are harsh enough to deny them the vote for life, possibly be more likely to vote for men? And those districts would have more women....
As I mentioned above, a district with a large gayborhood, like Pelosi's, would have more men in it than women, and I'd imagine those folks would be more likely to vote for a woman.
A few people have mentioned immigrants, and that seems like a possibility. If the male/female ratio is based on adults, not eligible voters, districts with more immigrants would be more male, and maybe latino people are more likely to vote for women.
Just throwing ideas out.
Totally anecdotal, and only applies to Maryland:
Since the 1962 redistricting, the following women have represented various Congressional districts in the state of Maryland:
MD-1 none
MD-2 Helen Bentley (R)
MD-3 Barbara Mikulski (D)
MD-4 Marjorie Holt (R)
. . .Donna Edwards (D)
MD-5 Gladys Spellman (D)
MD-6 Beverly Byron (D)
MD-7 none
MD-8 Connie Morella (R)
Any pattern? Not that I see, except that Baltimore City (current MD-7) is a majority female Congressional District by population, and also the poorest district in the state. At the time Barbara Mikulski sat in Congress, though, Baltimore City was in MD-3. In effect, she represented most of what is now MD-7.
And then there's MD-1 (Maryland's Eastern Shore) which is a heavily agricultural area, with lots of Bay fisheries and chicken farming (Perdue anyone?), plus tourism (Ocean City and environs) as the primary economic engines of the district.
Mike in Maryland
My Blogger ID is http://www.blogger.com/profile/02848893412251095965
According to:
http://www.indexmundi.com/united_states/sex_ratio.html
For the United States:
Sex ratio: at birth: 1.05 male(s)/female
under 15 years: 1.05 male(s)/female
15-64 years: 1 male(s)/female
65 years and over: 0.72 male(s)/female
total population: 0.97 male(s)/female (2008 est.)
Mike in Maryland
My Blogger ID is http://www.blogger.com/profile/02848893412251095965
Philip said:
"Presumably there are roughly an equal number of males versus females in America (at least to within +/- 5%) so how does this 86:100 statistic come about"?
This comes about because a small difference in male to female ratio is magnified when you the ratio is depleted at a rate of 1 to 1 by marriage.
Example:
100 women live in a town with 95 men(all over 15 years old). That is not a very large difference, but let us assume that 70 of the women are married to 70 of the men. then the single population ratio becomes 30 woman to 25 men. if you normalize to 100 then the ratio is 120 single women to 100 single men. Now 114 to 100 doesn't sound so unreasonable considering that women have tended to out live men on average.
I'd like to see the p-values on those ever-so-beautiful looking curves.
As a bunch of people have noted, there have been more than 5 states to elect female governors, as there are 6 states that currently have female governors.
I believe when Nate said
"Alaska is one of just five states to have elected a female governor"
he meant to say:
"Alaska is one of just five states to have an elected female governor"
The first implies all time, whereas the second implies currently. There are 6 states with female governors currently, but in Connecticut Jodi Rell was Lt. Governor until the governor resigned, she wasn't elected to the position.
@mclever:
Well about half of that (those studies) are new information to me, but it corresponds to what I have read. I think males get a bad rap for bigotry in race or gender or age, when really they are just more biased toward cold-blooded pragmatism, and people on the short end of that stick mistake this lack of empathy for their social situation as animus.
For example, a male soldier might be against women in combat because he doesn't think a 120 pound girl can carry his 200 pound ass half a mile to a first aid station. She takes his pragmatic fear as bigotry against women; when it is really bigotry against weak upper body strength.
Of course stereotypes play into such perceptions, but stereotypes are dispelled among males easily by some proof of competence.
I suspect, based on the studies you discuss, stereotypes held by females are less easily dispelled by proof of competence, because unlike men, their assessment includes a whole gamut of factors beyond mere competence.
Alex:
Districts can be skewed male or female due to either male migration or female migration.
If enough males leave area X, that area will be female-dominated; if they are going to area Y, it will be male dominated. Obviously the reverse if females migrate, but I guess (with only anecdotal evidence) that adult males are more likely to migrate than are adult females.
Both types migrate for economic and romantic opportunity, and there is a definite skew in the types of opportunity that appeal to each gender. Few miners are women, for example, and in my area (computer science) women are a distinct minority as well.
Different districts have their own personalities as far as the jobs done there; the middle of Houston is much different than the middle of farmland, or the coast, or the middle of Vegas or L.A. for that matter.
Notice the variations are not great, 5% one way or another. We expect there to be variation.
poster SarahLawrence is correct on this...
There is a geographical, thus cultural difference at work here. Women's suffrage, or women's liberation, first happened in the American West, in the late 1800's, it became law in the early 1900's, despite fierce objections from the US East coast. The US West had the opportunity to start from scratch. Free of the boys club of the east, free from racial prejudices and classism...etc.
The American West = freedom. It is not just a marketing ploy.
The US West has always been more liberal, the US East more traditional. Women are still treated like princesses in NY, NJ CT, etc....women in the West are treated like men, equals in nearly every way. People expect women to engage in hard labor, work in upper management, just as much as men. There is still a big cultural difference in this country, east v west and the east is simply lagging behind......which I am sure challenges every assumption or stereotype you have of what the interior American West is all about.
Pick up a history text now an then.
BeanoCook:
Oh puhlease, I have worked months as a consultant in a dozen major cities in the USA, including New York, St. Louis, Chicago, Atlanta, Phoenix, San Francisco, Dallas, Houston and Omaha.
Guess what? Everybody is watching the same movies, the same TV, the same sports, and reading the same Internet. Woman aren't any more "liberated" east of the Mississippi than west of it, or north of the Mason Dixon line than south of it.
Whatever historical liberation differences might have once existed are all faded away by now, the Internet and cable and nationally run news media long ago homogenized the USA. We've been put in the blender, and the only big distinctions left are urban, suburban or rural, evangelical or religious or secular.
Geography explains nothing, gender psychology explains almost all of it.
There are plenty of good ideas here but I have always felt that at least part of the explanation was that a member of any group that can be reasonably identified as historically victimized, oppressed, or out-of-power, will in todays anti-discriminatory society receive some deference from the historically empowered group or other historically out-of-power groups, and for various reasons get judged the harshest by other members of the same group.
Tim's June 7 Post is right on target. When men are working harder to please women (as they will when there is a scarcity of women) their attitudes towards women becomes more respectful.
This is one of the reasons why educating females has such an influence on societies. It's not just the added number of educated people, but the influence that educated women have over the behavior of prospective suitors.
There is some good evidence of all of this, but I'm too lazy to look it up.
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