Political Attitudes and the Gender Gap in the USSR

Abstract

significantly from those of men. Most research on gender differences in political attitudes has focused on western capitalist systems. This paper will expand that focus and use new evidence from a survey of 2,793 former Soviet citizens to determine whether significant differences exist between Soviet men and women in their attitudes toward politics and on a range of policy issues. The Soviet case is especially interesting, on the one hand, because official doctrine has declared gender differences to be socially irrelevant and, on the other, because male dominance, particularly in the political realm, nonetheless persists. Gender, though, is an especially vexed subject. Although sex is a primary, biological, more or less unchanging characteristic, gender relations are profoundly social, profoundly artificial, profoundly mutable constructs. In addition to studying the effect of gender on variations in political attitudes, then, this paper will also examine the effects of the varying roles and situations that follow usually but not inevitably in the wake of gender. Our analysis will proceed at three interconnected levels, asking three questions. What theories explain why and on what issues men and women in western countries might have different political attitudes? What in the Soviet Union indicates that these attitude variations can-or can not-be expected to exist? From Soviet Interview Project survey data,' what concrete