EPUBLICANS ARE from Mars, Democrats are from Venus has become a perennial election year theme. The latest polls show George W. Bush 10 to 17 points ahead of Al Gore among men and Gore leading by 4 to 9 points among women. It is likely that on Tuesday, a majority of male votes will go to one candidate and a majority of female votes to the other.
What does this seemingly dramatic split between the sexes mean? This topic has been endlessly discussed since the late 1980s, when the gender gap first emerged as a major factor in electoral politics. Once, the conventional wisdom was that women were backing Democrats because of the Democratic Party's commitment to women's rights, including abortion rights - even though, in fact, men and women have never differed much on these issues.
According to a more common argument, there is a gender divide on the role of government itself, due either to innate differences between the sexes or to their different experiences. Men, we're told, value self-reliance and toughness, so they want a government that maintains military strength and isn't overly generous with welfare programs, while women value compassion and caring, so they favor a government that helps people.
Whether this theory is more favorable to men or to women depends on one's politics.
Some conservative pundits, including women such as National Review editor Kate O'Beirne, disparage the stereotypical female voter as soft-headed, easily seduced by sentimental rhetoric, and afraid to stand on her own two feet. One popular notion on the right is that women by their very nature want to be rescued by a strong protector, and when they can't rely on a big man they look to Big Government.
Meanwhile, some left-wing commentators, such as writer Barbara Ehrenreich, deride the stereotypical male voter as hard-hearted, easily seduced by macho rhetoric, and determined to keep the government away from his money and his guns. In a Time magazine essay during the last presidential election, Ehrenreich sneered that men's politics reflected their obsession with sports and action movies, while women remained connected to the real world and human needs.
But in politics, as in life, reality is more complex than Mars-Venus stereotypes. For one, gender gap talk exaggerates tendencies that, while large enough to influence elections, hardly amount to an interplanetary distance. We hear about fundamental differences and polarization between men and women. But in a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll, both sexes favored a smaller government with fewer services over a bigger government with more services - 66 percent of men, 51 percent of women.
According to the Pew Research Center, majorities of both sexes believe the government is wasteful and inefficient, though more men share this view; however, most also feel that the government should guarantee food and shelter for everyone, though women are more likely to agree.
Obviously, neither women nor men are a solid bloc. African-Americans of both sexes overwhelmingly vote Democratic; on the other hand, white women are currently backing Bush over Gore, 48 to 43 percent. Then there's the marital status gap. Single women lean toward the Democrats much more heavily than married women - which might fit in with the conservatives' government as substitute husband theory, except that a majority of single men also back Gore.
Why are women more progovernment? Partly, as political analyst Anna Greenberg points out in The American Prospect, it's because since the 1960s government programs have been geared more to women than men. Antipoverty efforts have focused on single-mother families. Even among beneficiaries of universal social insurance programs such as Social Security and Medicare, women outnumber men because they outlive them.
What's more, women are overrepresented in public sector jobs - so, when they hear about trimming big government, they're more likely to fear for their jobs. And many women in the private sector believe, rightly or wrongly, that they need affirmative action. In other words, maybe it's not compassion but self-interest that makes women more supportive of activist government.
Ironically, concerns about the gender gap have made politicians of both parties even more eager to seduce women with government largesse. In the process, they forget that women are not monolithic: Female entrepreneurs, for instance, have the same concerns about taxes and regulation as their male counterparts.
One may hope that men's and women's voting patterns will converge as their lives become more similar. Until then, gender gap politics will continue to reinforce not only women's dependence on the state but tiresome stereotypes of both women and men.
Cathy Young is a contributing editor at Reason magazine. Her column appears regularly in the Globe.
