Race, Gender Role Attitudes and Support for Feminism

nism. Most early research centered on the attitudes of white women, leaving a gap in our understanding of black gender attitudes and feminism. Studies based on surveys conducted in the early 1970s reported greater support for feminist positions and organizations among black women than among their white counterparts (Freeman 1975; Campbell, Converse and Rodgers 1976; Fulenwider 1980). These results are consistent with deprivation theories of social movements. Ransford and Miller (1983) argued that black women should be more supportive of feminist positions because they were comparatively disadvantaged on two status hierarchies--race and gender. Shingles (1986) claimed that the double status disadvantage of black women should result in greater group consciousness, and found some support for this hypothesis. Other writers (Almquist 1979; Hershey 1978) noted that black women were more likely than whites to be heads of households, had more decision-making authority when married, and were more likely to provide a significant proportion of family income than white women, so the actual gender roles of black women differed substantially from those of white women. The logic of these analyses was that because black women regularly encountered role expectations of strength, independence, and labor force participation, they could be expected to be more supportive of feminism. Despite these theoretical expectations, empirical research to date has shown mixed results. Ransford and Miller (1983) did not find black women to be more supportive of gender equality than white women. Sigelman and Welch (1984) reported no significant differences between black and white women in their willingness to vote for a woman