Our Hypothesis

We hypothesize that people’s attitudes toward gender will guide their support toward welfare programs and their recipients. This is driven by ideas generated through past opinions regarding gender and normative gender ideals that have continued to impact attitudes regarding gender today. For example, we found support of the gender gap in regards to the bread-winning regulations. Even if men didn’t have the means, they were legally forced to provide for their families and act as the “bread-winners”, or they would be considered dead-beat fathers. These regulations were all passed in an effort to potentially save money for the United States government. Instead of these women going on welfare programs for financial assistance, the financial burden instead went on the father. We concluded that this would contribute to a bias among men in terms of their support for programs benefitting women and generated a gendered perspective for the welfare system.

Understanding who and what each welfare program benefitted is also important in regards to our hypothesis. We assumed that more people who support ideas of feminism would also support programs such as WIC (Women, Infants, Children). As stated in previous research, women are more likely to support programs that benefit women. This idea does not only pertain to WIC, but also, as proven in an ANES study, it is more common for women to favor higher levels of spending on the poor (Conover & Lowery).

In another ANES study on compassion and American public opinion, it was found that women are more caring and compassionate than men (Steenbergen). The study also found that when taking away race and ideology, the likelihood for supporting men and women on welfare went up (Steenbergen).  Also, setting race and ideology to neutral the study shows that women and men’s support for government spending increases (Steenbergen). The study emphasized the exact impact of gender on these opinions alone.  While both men and women support increased, the female support began larger and increased more than the male support.