Much scholarship has noted that there are significant differences in the political behavior of women and men. Women, for example, are found to be more likely to identify as and vote for Democrats, less likely to hold conservative issue positions, and more likely to vote for incumbents. One of the more disturbing gender gaps occurs in political knowledge: Specifically, women are typically found to be less knowledgeable about politics and government than their male counterparts. We propose that much of the gap can be explained by theories of risk aversion, which imply that women are less likely to guess on questions for which they are uncertain. Using item response models, we demonstrate that failure to consider these gender-based differences leads to scales that significantly underestimate the political knowledge of women. Consistent with other work in this area, we find that accounting for the higher propensity of men to guess decreases the gender gap in knowledge by around 36%. I magine a situation in which two individuals, one man and one woman, are taking a public opinion survey. Both are asked a series of political knowledge questions. One of these questions asks them to list the five freedoms of the First Amendment. Though uncertain, the first individual takes a stab at it. The second individual, also uncertain, decides to choose the "don't know" option instead of guessing. Assume that both individuals are of equivalent political sophistication. In this scenario, which individual is the man and which is the woman? In light of prior evidence from political knowledge research, the gender gap in

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Rather unexpectedly, prior work has failed to find consistent gender differences in public support for legal abortion. Given that gender differences in public opinion emerge for a wide range of other issue areas, it seems paradoxical that there is no consistent gender difference on the issue of abortion. I propose that this failure to find a consistent gender difference is due to how abortion attitudes are modeled. Controlling for religiosity, which research has shown women to score higher on, results in a small and consistent gender gap in support for legal abortion with women more likely than men to support.It is rather surprising that prior research does not find a consistent or sizeable gender gap on abortion attitudes. This article explores gender differences in support for abortion legality, showing that although some prior work fails to document a gender gap on the issue, important and politically meaningful differences exist between men and women's views of abortion. Even rather small gender differences of only two to three percentage points in public opinion are important and have the potential to be politically consequential. This is because women make up half of the population and recently have been more likely to vote than men (Center for American Women and Politics 2009).This article seeks to distinguish why inconsistencies in the literature for gender differences in abortion attitudes emerge. Differences in model specification often produce such discrepancies. These inconsistencies should be investigated so that as political scientists and public opinion researchers, we can better understand how different model specifications, or in other

In a representative democracy, policymakers, elected officials, and bureaucrats should heed public opinion. Research to date provides evidence that policymakers do care about the public’s positions on policy and that presidential administrations often seek public approval of their legislative agenda (see the Oxford Bibliographies in Political Science article, “Policy Responsiveness to Public Opinion” by Robert S. Erikson. Therefore, it is valuable to understand consistent and significant influences on the public’s policy positions and political attitudes. Gender appears to be a consistent and often significant influence on opinion. Generally, women tend to be more likely than men to adopt liberal positions on a long list of policies, including force issues, the size of the welfare state, the environment, and equal rights. For certain issues, gender seems to have a more complicated, or more conservative, influence, such as on abortion and on the legalization of marijuana. Overall, gender matters when considering public opinion in the United States. Moreover, issue gaps partially account for the gender gap in party identification and vote choice where women are more likely than men to identify as Democrats and vote for Democratic candidates. For example, in electoral simulations when women are given the same policy positions as men, a considerable reduction in the voting gender gap occurs. Readers interested in how gender influences political behavior should consult the Oxford Bibliographies in Political Science article, “Gender, Behavior, and Representation” by Elisabeth Gidengil. With women being slightly more than half of the population and being more likely to vote than men in recent elections, gender differences in policy preferences have substantial political consequences. This article discusses research on several issue areas with established gender gaps in opinion and provides a brief overview of scholarship investigating the origins of gender differences in public opinion. Much of the research cited here focuses on gender differences in public opinion but some material controls only for gender and finds a significant relationship.

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