Republican men say it’s a better time to be a woman than a man

By Claire Cain Miller, New York Times News Service

Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2017 | 2 a.m.

To be a woman in the United States is to feel unequal, despite great strides in gender equality, according to a wide-ranging poll about gender in postelection America released Tuesday. It’s catcalls on the street, disrespect at work and unbalanced responsibilities at home. For girls, it’s being taught, more than boys, to aspire to marriage, and for women, it’s watching positions of power go to men.

Men, however, don’t necessarily see it that way.

Those are some of the findings from the poll, by PerryUndem, a nonpartisan research and polling firm whose biggest clients are foundations. It surveyed 1,302 adults in December via NORC at the University of Chicago’s AmeriSpeak panel.

Eighty-two percent of women said sexism was a problem in society today, and 41 percent of women said they had felt unequal because of their gender.

Men underestimated the sexism felt by the women in their lives, the survey found. And while most respondents agreed it’s a better time to be a man than a woman in our society, only Republican men thought it was a better time to be a woman than a man.

As women across the nation prepare to march in protest of an election in which gender loomed large, the poll results reveal nearly unanimous support for gender equality and policies that would help women — but deep partisan divides in the perception of inequality and of who’s thriving and who’s losing in society.

Many Americans seemed to think others had it better than they did, especially Republican men.

Overall, only 37 percent of respondents thought it was a good time to be a woman in the United States. Fewer thought it was a good time to be a minority woman; 24 percent said it was a good time to be a Latina, and 11 percent a Muslim woman.

Republican men seem to see it differently. Just over half thought it was a good time to be a woman, while only 41 percent of them thought it was a good time to be a man.

President-elect Donald Trump’s rhetoric has appealed to people who feel this way. At his victory rally in Cincinnati in December, he said about women: “I hate to tell you men, generally speaking, they’re better than you are. Now, if I said it the other way around, I’d be in big trouble.”

Dennis Halaszynski, 81, is a retired police captain in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, and a registered Democrat who voted for Trump.

“It’s easier being a woman today than it is a man,” he said in an interview. “The white man is a low person on the totem pole. Everybody else is above the white man.”

Women “should be highly respected,” he said, but they are no longer unequal: “Everything in general is in favor of a woman. No matter what happens in life, it seems like the man’s always at fault.”

Democrats of both genders were much more likely to have felt unequal because of some aspect of their identity — 68 percent, compared with 47 percent of Republicans. Gender, race and religious views were the biggest reasons. The only reasons Republicans were more likely than Democrats to feel unequal were their religious views and military status.

There is overwhelming support for gender equality in work, life and politics: 93 percent of respondents said they believed in it. But 43 percent of male Trump voters said it had already been achieved. Only 20 percent of those polled and 12 percent of women agreed.

The disparity is partly because people define equality very differently, based on their politics and gender. A majority of respondents said the following things affected women’s rights and equality: unequal responsibilities caring for children; violence against women; a focus on women’s beauty and sexuality; the lack of women in political office and positions of power; sexism; racism; equal opportunities in the workplace; and access to birth control and abortion.

But in almost every instance, Republican men had a different view. For example, 51 percent of respondents but 24 percent of Republican men said a lack of women in political office affected women’s rights. Fifty-seven percent of respondents overall and 36 percent of Republican men said unequal responsibilities caring for family affected women’s rights.

Even men who said women were still treated unequally underestimated the sexism that women experience.

While 41 percent of women said they frequently or sometimes heard sexist language in their daily lives, 26 percent of men thought their partners did. Fifty-four percent of women said they had been touched by a man in an inappropriate way without consent, while 31 percent of men thought their partners had.

“The typical catcalling or comments or inappropriate gestures that men make toward you, I don’t think there’s any women who haven’t experienced that sort of harassment,” said Cristina Hall, 44, who works in customer service in San Diego.

But she was not surprised that men didn’t realize it.

“I think when people don’t go through certain experiences, it’s hard for them to understand that it even happens,” Hall said. “Maybe they’ve never done it to a woman. Plus as women, we don’t typically say anything because of fear we’re not going to be believed or retaliation or shame.”

About 40 percent of women said acts of sexism would be more likely because Trump won, including sexual assault and feelings of entitlement among men to treat women as sexual objects.

About a third of respondents said they were less tolerant of sexism in their own lives as a result of Trump’s victory, and 43 percent of parents said it made them teach their children about sexual assault and consent.

“People seem to feel validated in their racist and sexist beliefs right now,” said Tayler Lien, 22, a mixed-race college student in Las Vegas who voted for Hillary Clinton. “It’s a little bit scary.”

There was widespread support among large majorities in both parties for policies that would help women, like equal pay and paid leave. These have been rallying cries for feminists and progressives, and Republicans have traditionally opposed them. Congress failed to act on those policies during the Obama administration, but Trump has said he would push for them.

Ninety percent of the respondents and 86 percent of Republicans supported the idea that the next president and Congress should work on equal pay laws. Eight-nine percent of respondents supported policies improving access to high-quality, affordable child care, and 87 percent supported paid family and medical leave.

Policies concerning reproductive rights were the exception to the bipartisan support. Forty-three percent of Republicans and 82 percent of Democrats said they supported work toward protecting a woman’s right to abortion from the next president and Congress, and 40 percent of Republicans and 80 percent of Democrats opposed getting rid of the part of Obamacare that offers birth control without a copay.

Peg Cherry, 83, a lifelong Republican who voted for Trump, said only low-paying, low-status jobs were available when she was young. She worked part time in retail and elder care jobs while raising five daughters. All five worked — “a feather in my cap,” she said — and so she supports policies like equal pay and paid leave.

She said she thinks Trump will deliver.

“I think he’s going to put his money where his mouth is,” said Cherry, who lives in Lisbon Falls, Maine. “I think he’s more likely to because, look, he’s had his daughter in charge of a company and he could very well put a man in there.”

Cherry is not the only one pinning her hopes on Ivanka Trump for female-friendly policies. Sixty-five percent of people, including the majority of Democrats, said they wanted her to help push forward on women’s rights and equality.

Despite the widespread support for gender equality and certain feminist policies, only 19 percent of respondents said they considered themselves feminists. There was no clear consensus on who best represented feminism today. The largest shares of people, both women and men, named two black women: Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey.