1 Canadian academics have focused instead on questions of region, language, ethnicity and religion.

2 Dietch, Cynthia, “Sex Differences in Support for Government Spending,” in Mueller, Carol, ed., The Politics of the Gender Gap (Newbury Park: Sage, 1988), 192–216.Google Scholar

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8 Smeal, Eleanor, Why and How Women Will Elect the Next President (New York: Harper & Row, 1984)Google Scholar; and Abzug, Bella and Kebler, Mim, Gender Gap: Bella Abzug's Guide to Political Power for American Women (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984).Google Scholar

9 The data utilized in this article were made available by the Social Science Data Archive, Carleton University. They were originally collected by the Canadian Institute of Public Opinion. Neither the collectors of the data nor the Data Archives at Carleton University bears any responsibility for the analyses or interpretations presented herein.

10 Shapiro and Mahajan, “Gender Differences in Policy Preferences,” 53.

11 Relatively few authors have published on this subject. O'Neill, See Brenda, “The Gender Gap: Re-evaluating Theory and Method,” in Burt, Sandra and Code, Loraine, eds., Changing Methods: Feminists Transforming Practice (Peterborough: Broadview Press, 1995), 327–356Google Scholar; Terry, John, The Gender Gap: Women's Political Power, current issue review 84–17E (Ottawa: Library of Parliament, 1984)Google Scholar; and Wearing, Peter and Wearing, Joseph, “Does Gender Make a Difference in Voting Behaviour?” in Wearing, Joseph, ed., The Ballot and Its Message (Toronto: Copp Clark Pitman, 1991), 341–350.Google Scholar

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13 Black, Naomi, “The Canadian Women's Movement: The Second Wave,” in Burt, S., Code, L. and Dorney, L., eds., Changing Patterns: Women in Canada (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1989), 80–102Google Scholar; and Adamson, Nancy, Briskin, Linda and McPhail, Margaret, Feminist Organizing for Change: The Contemporary Women's Movement in Canada (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1988).Google Scholar

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18 Smeal, Why and How Women Will Elect the Next President; Abzug, Gender Gap; Carroll, “Gender Politics and the Socializing Impact of the Women's Movement”; and Sapiro, “The Women's Movement and the Creation of Gender Consciousness.”

19 While it is possible to claim that the women's movement in Quebec is distinct from that in the rest of Canada (Dumont, Micheline, “The Origins of the Women's Movement in Quebec,” in Backhouse, Constance and Flaherty, David, eds., Challenging Times: The Women's Movement in Canada and the United States [Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1992], 72–89)Google Scholar, its impact is not considered separately. Despite conflicts over constitutional issues, both the English and French branches took similar positions on the issues explored in this article. See Bégin, Monique, “The Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada: Twenty Years Later,” in Backhouse, and Flaherty, , eds., Challenging Times, 24.Google Scholar

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22 Lake, Celinda, “Guns, Butter and Equality: The Women's Vote in 1980,”paper presented at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association,Milwaukee, 1982, 13.Google Scholar

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25 Snow and Benford, “Master Frames and Cycles of Protest,” 137.

26 Taylor and Whittier, “Analytical Approaches to Social Movement Culture.”

27 Instead, these studies ask questions about respondents' feelings towards the women's movement or membership in women's groups.

28 Life-cycle arguments assume that individuals' attitudes are influenced by their experiences over the course of their lives. As individuals pass from one stage to the next, their opinions reflect changing priorities and responsibilities. The interests of young adults will differ from those of new parents or senior citizens; the experience of being in university, of raising small children or of living on a fixed income contribute to these differences. Unlike cohort effects where attitudes remain relatively stable throughout an individual's lifetime, life-cycle effects vary, causing attitudes to change periodically.

29 Friedan, Betty, The Feminine Mystique (New York: Penguin Books, 1963).Google Scholar

30 The actual question wording can be found in the appendix.

31 Fulenwider, Clair Knoche, Feminism in American Politics: A Study of Ideological Influence (New York: Praeger, 1980)Google Scholar; Klein, Gender Politics; and Rinehart, Gender Consciousness and Politics.

32 Klein, Gender Politics, 7.

33 Ibid., 96–97.

34 It should be noted that men may also be succumbing to the pressure of social desirability by responding the way they feel they should in a liberal democratic society, and not the way they actually believe. The impact of the problem for social desirability can be found in Northrup's study of gender-of-interviewer effects. Unfortunately, the Gallup data do not allow us to control for these effects. Northrup, David. “Gender-of-interviewer Effects and Level of Public Support for Affirmative Action,” in Gingras, François-Pierre, ed., Gender and Politics in Contemporary Canada (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1995), 232–248.Google Scholar

35 The small sample size of the Gallup studies which usually include between 900 to 1,000 respondents means that when controls are applied, statistics frequently appear as insignificant. While this limits the ability to generalize from these results, it should be noted that even when not statistically significant they are in the expected direction.

36 Women also showed greater support than men among the women's movement cohort although these differences did not reach statistical significance.

37 See Everitt, Joanna, “The Gender Gap in Canada: Now You See It, Now You Don't,” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 35 (1998), 191–219.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38 The surveys used did not include questions on ideology or feminist consciousness, so they could not be included in the equation.

39 A June 1992 Gallup survey revealed that 60 per cent of Canadians supported the goals of the feminist movement. In the 1984 Canadian National Election Study, Canadians' mean thermometer score in rating of the women's movement was 60.15. In the 1992 Referendum Study this mean score had risen to 64.06.

40 See Everitt, “The Gender Gap in Canada.”

41 Rinehart, Gender Consciousness and Politics.

42 Taylor and Whittier, “Analytical Approaches to Social Movement Culture.”

43 Carroll, “Gender Politics and the Socializing Impact of the Women's Movement”; and Sapiro, “The Women's Movement and the Creation of Gender Consciousness.”