Civic Language + Gender

A deep dive on the impact of gender on civic language.

On Wednesday, June 15, PACE partnered with the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute for a Deep Dive session that explored how gender identity impacts perceptions of the terms in our Civic Language Perceptions Project. In addition to reading this article, you can watch the recording and view the slide deck for more information. It is important to note at the outset that of all the respondents to our survey, 50.4% identified themselves as female, 48.6% identified themselves as male, 0.5% identified as non-binary, and another 0.5% preferred not to say. Thus, we do not have enough data about non-dominant gender identities in our survey to make a statistically meaningful comparison for non-binary or other gender identities. While we recognize that gender identity is much more varied than the binary of male/female, given the data we have available from our respondents, we focused on the comparison between male and female in our analysis. This choice is not meant to exclude other gender identities but rather to ensure the integrity of the data we have available to us at this time. We hope that our work inspires others to explore a broader spectrum of gender identities and how those identities impact perceptions of civic terms.

These data reveal several themes, centered around the following questions:

1. How does gender impact people’s perception of terms?
2. How do males and females associate civic terms?
3. What differences are meaningful in the data between females and males?

Analysis and Findings

All data in this piece is by Citizen Data. All charts and graphs were created by Kyle Chambers.

We found the following results to these questions:

• Democracy and civic engagement, which we consider “power words” for this project given the depth of analysis we have on them, are some of the biggest differences between men and women, and we note that men are more positive.
• Most words with the biggest differentials had “civic” or “civil” in the word (e.g. civic engagement, civil society, civic health, civic infrastructure).
• Except for unity and belonging, men are more positive than women on 19 of our 21 civic terms.
• Interestingly, men are also more negative than women on most words (17 out of 21 total). Overall, we’re seeing that men have stronger preferences — positive and negative — than women on these terms.
• The words where women are more negative than men include justice, patriotism, racial equity, and civility.
• Men and women had the same low level of negativity towards the term democracy, despite it being one of the words with the most positive differential.
• The 5 most unfamiliar words are also the ones with the biggest unfamiliar differential, with women being more unfamiliar on those terms. In fact, most of the terms are more unfamiliar to women than men — 17 out of 21 total. Words where men are more unfamiliar than women include belonging and liberty.

Next, we looked at who men and women associate with using the various terms, as a way to understand if there is something about the messenger that matters. This graph is showing only the top selection among men and women. For example, it’s not that all men only associate white people using the term belonging, but rather, it’s that white people was the top selected racial association for men overall on the term belonging. The goal of this analysis was to see something about alignment between men and women.

• There is full alignment on who men and women associate using the terms by education level and political ideology.
• There is also full alignment on who they don’t associate using the terms by race (no Hispanic or Asian) and education level (no non-college grads).
• Our civic terms have trended liberal overall, so it’s interesting to note the conservative association across gender groups for citizen, civility, justice, liberty, and patriotism.
• Where there was not full alignment on racial associations, women associated with Black people and men associated with white people.
• Unity is the most positive word in the survey overall, and there was consensus between men and women that the word is most often used by working class, Black, college grads who are liberal/progressive.
• Privilege is the most negative word in the survey overall, and there was consensus that it’s most often used by upper class, white, college grads who are liberal/progressive.

Overall, there is very little difference by gender in terms of civic activities that males and females believe are important to ensure that democracy works. Similar to every other identity group comparison that we have done, voting is the top selection for both gender groups by a significant amount. Females prefer attending public meetings and advocating for issues by small margins, whereas males prefer discussing politics with neighbors, joining a cause or movement, posting on social media, and serving in the military or a civilian program–also by small percentages. Volunteering is not overly favored by women, despite the gendered narrative that sometimes exists about these activities.

We also looked at how the groups define the terms democracy and civic engagement. Females and males generally agreed on their preferred definition of democracy as being of, by and for the people at 52% and 50%, respectively. With regard to civic engagement, it is notable that 61% of females think it’s “both” definitions (influencing government functions and making communities better), which is 13% higher than males. Males outpaced females for selecting “making communities better” as the definition of civic engagement. They selected it at a higher rate than influencing government functions, which may counter the narrative that making communities better is “women’s work.”

These trends and findings in the data invite further investigation and exploration. In particular, these questions and topics were raised during the deep dive session as potential areas for future exploration:

• Why are males both more positive and more negative than females on the majority of the terms?
• Given that females reported higher levels of unfamiliarity with the terms, does that suggest that females are actually more unfamiliar or that they are more likely to admit their unfamiliarity?
• Given the small amount of difference between females and males in much of this data, what can we conclude about the impact of gender on civic engagement more generally?

We are grateful for all who joined the conversation and shared their insights on these data. Keep an eye on our Medium page and twitter as we publish more learnings on this topic, and please keep us updated on how this data is helping you and your work by emailing Language@PACEfunders.org. We look forward to learning from you!

To learn more about the Civic Language Perceptions Project, please visit www.PACEFunders.org/Language.