Framing Gender: Political Rhetoric, Gender Schemas, and Public Opinion on U.S. Health Care Reform

Abstract

Although gender plays an enormous role in structuring personal relationships, society, politics, and culture, we know relatively little about when people's gender ideologies will influence their opinions on issues that do not trade directly on matters of gender. This article presents a theory of “group implication,” which defines the conditions under which elite political discourse can lead citizens to perceive and evaluate issues in terms of their gender schemas—their cognitive representations of gender beliefs. I apply this framework to an analysis of the 1993–94 U.S. health care reform effort, and demonstrate how elite frames structured the issue in a way consistent with the gender schema. This structuring was subtle and symbolic, and served to associate people's gender ideology with their thinking about health care reform. The article concludes with consideration of the implication of these findings for our understanding of the political impact of gendered rhetoric, and for our conceptual understanding of the relationship between gender and public opinion.