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It is commonly believed that women are more liberal than men. This may be true but there is a wide differential between married and unmarried women.
Obama won voters who were not married by 20 percentage points. There was a gender gap here—Obama won 67 percent of unmarried women and 56 percent of unmarried men—but he won single women and men.
Romney won married voters of both genders. He won 53 percent of married women.
Why is this so? I can think of four possibilities:
1) Married women spend more time in the company of men. A lot of the Democratic appeals are based on making women angry and resentful towards men. But if a woman is married to a man, she may find it hard to be resentful towards men if she feels very positively towards one in her home.
2) Children changes everything. Married women often have children. But in order to have them, a man is required. Perhaps being impregnated makes women grateful towards men for providing the essential yeast for childbearing.
3) Families have greater financial constraints. Families (often the result of married couples) have the need to make greater expenditures, making women more aware of the costs of goods and services, as well as the high rate of taxation. This may turn to make them more conservative.
4) Married women get more (mostly) heterosexual sex than unmarried ones do. While some unmarried women have sex, many more don't, and on average married women can get more of it because a ready, geographically desirable source of it is often not more than a few inches away. When a woman has sex with a man, she looks into his eyes and bonds with him. There is a chemical, mental conditioning that happens that makes her more predisposed towards men. Repeated treatments only deepen this affiliation process. Identifying more with men, similar to #1, makes women less suseptible to Democratic Party gender warfare messages.
So which cause is most likely? They are all possible, but only #4 is the result of an immediate chemical reaction in the brain, so its influence cannot be understated. In that case if Republicans want to win more of the women's vote a generic "voter drive" will not work; they need to embark on satisfying another drive of an entirely different kind. Young Republican men have to go out and convince Democratic women of the virtues of male companionship. Once that is done Hillary's siren song will have little sway over them.
(Abridged version originally published in AT)
It is commonly believed that women are more liberal than men. This may be true but there is a wide differential between married and unmarried women.
Obama won voters who were not married by 20 percentage points. There was a gender gap here—Obama won 67 percent of unmarried women and 56 percent of unmarried men—but he won single women and men.
Romney won married voters of both genders. He won 53 percent of married women.
Why is this so? I can think of four possibilities:
1) Married women spend more time in the company of men. A lot of the Democratic appeals are based on making women angry and resentful towards men. But if a woman is married to a man, she may find it hard to be resentful towards men if she feels very positively towards one in her home.
2) Children changes everything. Married women often have children. But in order to have them, a man is required. Perhaps being impregnated makes women grateful towards men for providing the essential yeast for childbearing.
3) Families have greater financial constraints. Families (often the result of married couples) have the need to make greater expenditures, making women more aware of the costs of goods and services, as well as the high rate of taxation. This may turn to make them more conservative.
4) Married women get more (mostly) heterosexual sex than unmarried ones do. While some unmarried women have sex, many more don't, and on average married women can get more of it because a ready, geographically desirable source of it is often not more than a few inches away. When a woman has sex with a man, she looks into his eyes and bonds with him. There is a chemical, mental conditioning that happens that makes her more predisposed towards men. Repeated treatments only deepen this affiliation process. Identifying more with men, similar to #1, makes women less suseptible to Democratic Party gender warfare messages.
So which cause is most likely? They are all possible, but only #4 is the result of an immediate chemical reaction in the brain, so its influence cannot be understated. In that case if Republicans want to win more of the women's vote a generic "voter drive" will not work; they need to embark on satisfying another drive of an entirely different kind. Young Republican men have to go out and convince Democratic women of the virtues of male companionship. Once that is done Hillary's siren song will have little sway over them.
(Abridged version originally published in AT)
