We are approximately one day away from a collective exhale post-US election cycle when whichever candidate moves into the Oval Office, the rest of the world will finally be allowed to move on without the relentless barrage of American political public service announcements.
While this barrage is magnified across social media, news cycles, advertisements, and print on an almost overwhelming level within the United States, thanks to the symbolic position of global leadership it holds, the rest of the world cannot escape it either.
Now is the time when our ‘socials’ are overflowing with opinions, shares, memes, clips, and images indicating which side of the fence the poster sits on, and signaling to all who scroll by which ideologies and issues are most important to them.
Politics can be a deeply polarising hot button both at the voting booth and at the dinner table as people digest information and decide how it aligns with their own priorities and values.
You may hear stories in which families become alienated, friends are cut off, and even marriages are dissolved as opposing parties tally supporters.
We can feel so strongly about political affiliations despite usually never having met the candidates, never having read the fine print underscoring campaign promises, and sometimes minimal personal impact from an election outcome that we are sometimes willing to lose friends, families, and loved ones over it (Gonzalez et al., 2020).
Walking Contradictions: Exploring the Reasons Women May Vote Against Female Bodily Autonomy
Sometimes, however, the personal impact is not minimal, and lives can be truly, meaningfully impacted and disrupted by policy arising from the election of a new party.
Using female bodily autonomy as an example, this article explores the rationale behind why women may support, advocate, and vote for parties representing a conflict of their own self-interest.
Women’s suffrage produced parliamentary enactments granting UK women the right to vote in national elections in 1918 with restrictions, which were loosened to bear more resemblance to those of men in 1928.
The legal right to make one’s own reproductive decisions was granted to women in England, Scotland, and Wales almost 40 years later, in 1967.
Ireland, having been sidelined by centuries of religious moral absolutism (Earner-Byrne, & Urquhart, 2019), took another 52 years to enact similar protections and considerations for female bodily autonomy.
A mere 3 years later, in 2022, the USA overturned these constitutional protections for women which, having been in place since 1973, were abolished under the watch of a stacked Supreme Court bench, catapulting women back to a time of dangerous closed-door options in which safety was not only jeopardized, but seriously impacted.
Few legitimate or objective observers can claim this to be a function of anything other than a patriarchal administration’s selection of Supreme Court justices.
These justices were issued into power at break-neck speed, with unprecedented controversy, while espousing empty promises to maintain the Roe Vs Wade status quo should it become an issue for their deliberation during their tenure.
Whether you are a woman of reproductive age, a mother, a grandmother, a sister, aunt, daughter, friend, co-worker, or simply a person aware of women existing in the world, this issue impacts you.
Reproductive autonomy leads to higher educational attainment, workforce participation, and national GDP (Coburn, 2019). The cost of healthcare is reduced, as are rates of anxiety and depression in mothers with reproductive freedom (World Health Organization, 2009).
The impact of bodily autonomy is incalculable, yet an astonishing 48% of American women still showed up in the 2022 midterms to cast votes for republican candidates, voting against their own bodily autonomy, and that of their daughters, nieces, sisters, and granddaughters (Hartig et al., 2023).
Why are women voting against themselves?
Firstly, not all women cast votes based on this issue. Many consider the loss of female bodily autonomy an unfortunate byproduct of a choice they feel compelled to make based on alternative factors, for example, personal economic impact.
This is an honest concern, and global economic data supports the fact that women are more likely to align themselves with conservative spending and risk assumptions.
However, outside of the clear and present danger of cultural oppression and dictates, and the speculative future risk of eternal damnation arising from religious indoctrination or pedagogy, there remains a contingent of Western-based women willing to cast a vote that serves to undermine their own freedom, value, health, and safety.
On the surface, this makes no sense, and it may be enticing to cast judgment on this demographic who, it seems, are dead set on ignoring the sage advice of Maya Angelou (1969) who summarised the simple imperative to do the best we can until we know better, then when we know better, do better.
But is it that simple? Why do free-thinking, educated women of all shapes, colors, means, and ethnicities vote for the party working so transparently to strip them of their bodily autonomy?
Voting behavior is a heavily researched and complex topic, comprised of a wide variety of variables including personal values, social and cultural elements, and broader psychological factors.
While there is unlikely to be one single and simple answer to explain why women may vote against their own self-interest, research suggests the answer may have something to do with safety. Some theoretical lenses through which this idea may be explored are discussed below.
Social Identity Theory (SIT; Tajfel & Turner, 1986) explains the organization and categorization of our environments into manageable groups as a natural and instinctual human function.
We organize people, including ourselves, into groups, and then seek ways to gain positive feedback from group membership.
The group to which one allocates oneself, their “in-group”, is viewed more positively than groups of which one is not a self-identified member, i.e., “out-groups”.
This organizational model helps reinforce positive self-perception and reduce uncertainty (Hogg, 2000).
Group membership can require a subjugation of personal interests instead of those perceived as more important to the wider group, but this may be considered a worthy exchange if a woman perceives her identity to be aligned with other group members who appear to be safely positioned to survive and thrive with the status quo.
That is, if my neighbors all signal their belief that the sky is red and I secretly believe it is blue, then do I really belong in this nice, safe neighborhood where, so far, I have lived a reasonably calm and safe life, insulated from the turmoil of the unknown in other neighborhoods?
And if I do not belong here, then where do I fit in? Where is my tribe, and who will walk with me under the blue sky?
Potential loss of in-group status can be such a frightening proposition that it can be experienced as a threat to one’s very survival (Turquet, 2019). Thus, to survive, some women may feel compelled to live under a red sky.
A step removed, but not entirely distinct from SIT, is Groupthink (Janis, 1982) defined as “a mode of thinking people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members striving for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action” (p. 9).
In social contexts, particularly those with dominant political beliefs, women may conform to prevailing opinions to maintain harmony and for self-preservation. Women are not free from the risk of facing anger from those whose beliefs or desires conflict with their own.
So serious and prevalent is this phenomenon (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2019) that it has a label: rejection killing.
When viewed in this context, it becomes a bit easier to contemplate that whether consciously or not, women may be aware of the perils of violating groupthink, and may feel drawn to comply.
Another lens through which to consider what may seem a walking contradiction is that of Narrative Theory (NT). NT explores how we make sense of our identities and social positions through the stories we consume, accept, reject, and repeat (Bruner, 1991).
These stories, shaped by culture, media, religion, and social expectations can significantly impact the way we perceive our own interests.
Along with the ways ‘group belonging’ influences dominant narratives, NT offers internalized cultural narratives as a way to view the issue.
This is the idea that cultural prescriptions of ‘should’ can significantly impact thinking around concepts like gender roles, family, and even morality, which can result in the prioritization of values arising from tradition, religion, or group loyalty (e.g., political party, community, or social/economic class affiliation).
Recent research speculates the construction of self-narratives requires that individuals internalize cultural master narratives in specific socio-cultural settings (de La Mata et al., 2022). Here, the story shapes the behavior.
For example, internalized stories touting the risk of economic decline can overshadow concerns about reproductive freedom. Women living relatively comfortable lives may find themselves casting a vote for the party with the most compelling promise of status quo, a “better the devil you know…” instead of the risk associated with potential upheaval.
We might also consider cognitive dissonance (CD; Festinger, 1959), which is the mental discomfort experienced by holding contradictory beliefs, attitudes, or values or when behavior conflicts with any of these.
For example, if someone values bodily autonomy but also votes for the party working to strip women of this right, the conflict between values and belief creates dissonance.
Dissonance is uncomfortable and CD theory posits that we are intrinsically motivated to alleviate this discomfort by either changing beliefs (“I do not value female bodily autonomy the way I used to”), changing behavior (“I must now vote differently”), or adding new cognitions, such as introducing new beliefs or justifications to help manage the conflict (“the odds of this becoming as bad as all that are probably slim”).
Once again, the intensity of discomfort is influenced by external factors such as cultural and social norms, and individuals may experience varying degrees of dissonance based on expectations of their social circles.
This is an important point as it highlights the internal threat also experienced by women who cast a vote that may seem contradictory to their own self-interest. Through this lens, we can start to understand that this is not always so.
Stepping Back
Taking a step back, it is important to recognize the inherently patriarchal context in which the entire culture and system is rooted.
Is it really even reasonable to ask the question of why women may vote against their own self-interest?
Who is asking this question of men? When might we read about the steps being taken to assuage the historical imbalance of power, whether subversively or transgressively?
Probably not in the next month. In the meantime, however, it may be helpful to consider the ways in which the differences between us and our ideologies might be understood with more empathy and insight, and less judgment.
We may not agree on the choices our friends and loved ones make, but we may be able to see our way toward the internal and external challenges they face as they make their own choices and uphold their own values as best they can.
References
Angelou, M. (1969). I know why the caged bird sings. Random House.
Bruner, J. (1991). The narrative construction of reality.Critical inquiry,18(1), 1-21.
Coburn, E. (2019). Trickle-down gender at the International Monetary Fund: the contradictions of “femina economica” in global capitalist governance.International Feminist Journal of Politics,21(5), 768-788.
de la Mata, M. L., Cala, M. J., & Sala, A. (2022). Facing dominant master narratives on gender and sexuality: Identity reconstruction of women in situations of inequality. Memory Studies, 15(1), 120-138.
Earner-Byrne, L., & Urquhart, D. (2019).The Irish abortion journey, 1920–2018. Springer.
Festinger, L. (1959). Cognitive dissonance.New York.
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/07/12/voting-patterns-in-the-2022-elections
https://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/gsh/Booklet_5.pdf
Hogg, M. A.(2000).Subjective uncertainty reduction through self-categorization: A motivational theory of social identity processes.European Review of Social Psychology,11,223–255. doi:10.1080/14792772043000040
Gonzalez, K. A., Pulice-Farrow, L., & Galupo, M. P. (2020). “My aunt unfriended me:”: Narratives of GLBTQ Family Relationships Post 2016 Presidential Election. InThe 2016 US Presidential Election and the LGBTQ Community(pp. 63-86). Routledge.
Janis, I. L. (1982). Groupthink (2nd ed.). Boston: Houghton Mifflin
Tajfel, H., &Turner, J. C.(1986).The social identity theory of intergroup behaviour. InS. Worchel&W. G. Austin(Eds.),Psychology of intergroup relations(pp.7–24).Chicago, IL: Nelson
Turquet, P. (2019). Threats to identity in the large group: A study in the phenomenology of the individual’s experiences of changing membership status in a large group 1. InThe large group(pp. 87-144). Routledge.
World Health Organization, & Key Centre for Women’s Health in Society. (2009). Mental health aspects of women’s reproductive health: a global review of the literature.
