Dave Pollard's environmental philosophy, creative works, business papers and essays.
In search of a better way to live and make a living, and a better understanding of how the world really works.

	February 12, 2007

If Women (or Men) Didn't Have the Vote Something strange happened around 1980 in the US and Canada, and perhaps in other countries as well. Women of all ages, who had previously been more conservative than their male cohorts, crossed over and became more liberal, both socially and economically, on almost every issue. Prior to that, if women hadn't had the vote, we might have had more liberal regimes (e.g. a majority of men voted for JFK; a majority of women for his opponent, Richard Nixon). But men generally get their way, and for the most part women's votes haven't made a difference to the final outcome. Since 1980 the men=conservative, women=liberal gender gap has steadily widened. What's really interesting to imagine is what the world would probably have been, and would be like today if men didn't have the vote: President Gore would be in his second term. There would have been no Iraq war. There would have been no huge tax cuts for the rich at the expense of social programs. The US would not be reeling under a crushing federal debt. The Liberal Party would still be in power in Canada. Canada and the US would both have ratified, and be working furiously to comply with, the Kyoto accord. There would be no NAFTA. The chart above shows (red dots) the US gender gap in political and economic worldviews. The gender gap for Canada is very similar, except the dots are proportionally further left and further down. Michael Adams explains this gender gap in his books Fire & Ice and American Backlash (from which the above chart is adapted) which look at the even larger gaps between the US and the rest of the world's affluent nations, and between the young and old in the US. A report by three Canadian universities provides a more detailed look at the gender gap. While it's dangerous to generalize, these studies suggest that: One's dependence on social services or public sector employment has no bearing on political views: the gender gap is the same across all age groups, economic strata and employment sectors Men tend more towards survival-of-the-fittest political views, a competitive worldview as contrasted to the prevailing cooperative/collaborative worldview of women The gender gap disappears among only one segment of the population -- those who describe themselves as 'very religious'; that segment skews strongly to the prevailing male worldview of their age cohort I'm hard put to know what this means, and why it is so pronounced and so recent. What's your theory? What has happened over the last fifty years to create and then widen a gender gap that, if either gender were deprived of the vote, would make such a profound difference in the present realities and future prospects for our world? Categories: Frames, Left & Right 9:03:44 PM  trackback []  comment []

© Copyright 2007 Dave Pollard. Last update: 01/03/2007; 7:22:58 PM.