by Dish Staff
Seth Masket wonders what effect it has had:
Barry Burden investigates the role women have played in polarization. More specifically, he’s looking at the decline of housewives as party activists and their replacement by more ideologically motivated men.
Why we can’t draw firm conclusions:
This is one of those projects that just screams for more data. Unfortunately, there just aren’t great mass surveys prior to the 1950s, and studies of campaign activists are even more recent than that. … But at least tentatively, we have a plausible account for at least some of the shift in the parties since the 1950s. The parties are different because very different people are working for them now.
The Dish 