Cross-Cutting Identities in American Politics: Gender, Party, and Attitudes on Gun Reform

Abstract

<p>For decades, a focus on the gender gap in political attitudes has been a traditional way of understanding public opinion in the United States. However, as American political life becomes more polarized and partisans more divided, this frame fails to consider whether the increased importance of partisanship might work to disrupt expected patterns of gender difference. Examining an issue of significant prominence and salience in American political life – guns and gun policy – we move beyond a simple gender gap frame to examine gender gaps within each of the parties and the partisan differences among women and among men on these important issues. Drawing on data from the 2022 Cooperative Election Study, we consider whether gender and partisanship work together to shape attitudes toward guns and gun policies. We find that gender and party both work to shape attitudes on guns, but some respondents, Republican women and Democratic men, experience cross-pressures from their gender and party identities. This results in important complexity among gender and party groups, which we miss when we fail to account for the impact of multiple identities on the preferences of individuals.<br></p>