After Reagan: New Party Attitudes toward Gender

Abstract

From the suffrage period until the 1960s, the Democratic and Republican parties were split over women's issues. The Republican Party advocated equal rights for women, while the Democrats preferred protective legislation to shield women from social and economic competition. In the 1960s the parties began a process of convergence. By the close of the Johnson administration there was a virtual consensus that legal equality should be extended to women. Yet, in the early 1970s, the Republican Party began a historic role reversal, backing away from legal equality as well as acceptance of the Supreme Court's stance on abortion rights. Although these issues did not create a gender gap in the electorate, they, along with statements by party leaders, created the perception that Democrats were reaching out to women as constituents while Republicans were retreating. As a result, women's issues are strategically placed to be advanced or defeated in each partisan electoral contest.