The Polls: Gender and Attitudes Toward Violence

CONSIDERABLE attention in the media and social science community has been focused on the gender gap in President Reagan's popularity. In large part this gap may come from underlying differences between men and women toward violence and the use of force. Women and men differ both in their use of violence and in their approval of violence across a wide range of social conditions including foreign affairs, social control and law enforcement, and interpersonal relations, and the difference is reasonably stable across time. Looking at 285 data points we found that men were more supportive of the violent or forceful option in over 87 percent of the readings. 1 The results were ambiguous in 7 percent of the cases, with men more in favor of both the most and least forceful response and women leaning toward a middle alternative. Finally, in only just over 5 percent of the cases did women favor the forceful response more than men. The tendency of men to back violent options is moderately strong, averaging over 9 percentage points and ranging up to over 30 percentage points. The difference is largest on topics that are closely linked to major differences in socialization, including gun ownership, hunting, gun control attitudes, and attitudes toward boxing. Differences averaging about 10 percentage points are found on most questions dealing with law enforcement and criminal punishments-such as questions on the approval of the death penalty, television violence, and on a wide range of questions asking about the use of the military in international relations and support for America's involvement in wars. Differences tend to be somewhat smaller when dealing indirectly with