A recent poll from Gallup indicates that the political gap between men and women is widening, specifically between people ages 18-29.
Darren Sherkat, a professor of sociology at Southern Illinois University - Cabondale (SIUC) told KMOX that there's been a voting gap between men and women for a long time, but the partisan gap has been growing more rapidly over the last four years, and can be attributed to lots of different causes.
"I think that there's been a lot of anti-female discussion and rhetoric coming from the Republican Party, and the general kind of dismissal of women's rights, abortion being the capper, of course, in the last year," he said. "But it's tough to say that one issue is driving this."
Often, he said, women who identify as Republicans growing up may get older and start voting for Democrats because they don't like the Republican candidates -- and eventually end up identifying as Democrats.
Sherkat said another liberalizing feature is Republicans embracing a lot of "culture war politics" -- mainly topics that are going to affect younger people. That includes things like marijuana legalization and access to contraception.
It's not the partisan gap that's widening though -- it's political activity as a whole. John Jackson, Visiting Professor with the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute, said that women are becoming increasingly politically ambitious.
"More women are seeking office at every level, up to and including the President of the United States office, as we've already seen," Jackson said. "County boards, school boards, on up to state legislative and in Congress, more women are seeking and slowly more women are gaining those roles."
However, he said, women still have a long way to go to reach equity with men in most elected offices.
Jackson added that the gender gap was heavily driven by younger women, most of whom are trending more liberal. In some cases, he said, that feels threatening to men.
"In a sense, it's the politics as a zero sum game mentality that is more and more pushed in some quarters. It's not a matter of, I've got to lose if you're going to win, it should be looked at as what we call a positive sum game that everybody can win on this," he said. "If you can't get elected, but your daughter can or your wife can that would be, it seems to me, a more healthy way to look at it."
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