Twitter Conversations: Gendered Issue Publics Among Women

We investigate how gender shapes women’s political discussion on Twitter using an issue publics framework. We test whether the conditions for gendered issue publics to form among women around feminine issues exist using data on political discussion via social media in the 2020 and 2022 elections. Our data includes political discussion among political candidates, elites, and non-elites, or regular people. Our results reveal several key findings. First, we find that men elites were more likely to discuss feminine issues, such as health care, compared to women elites, but we found no gender differences between regular Twitter users in our sample. Democratic women elites are more likely to discuss equity-based feminine issues, such as equal pay, than Republican women elites, but we find no partisan differences among non-elite women. We also find no gender or partisan differences at the elite and non-elite levels in the discussion of trait-based feminine issues, such as education. Finally, we show that in 2022, the Dobbs decision that rescinded the constitutional right to an abortion in the U.S. increased the salience of this issue among both women and men. Overall, our research suggests that the conditions for issue publics among women may not strongly exist as we find that non-elite men talk about feminine issues too.