Gender-Role Traditionalism and Opposition to Trade in the United States

ABSTRACT A recently popular line in American trade politics is that free trade threatens male blue-collar manufacturing employment, thereby undermining “traditional” family gender roles in which men work outside of the home and women work as caregivers within it. This study asks whether American mass politics mirrors these ideas. Does a preference for “traditional” gender roles lead Americans to protectionism? Our analysis of American National Election Studies data suggests that it does. We find a significant and highly robust empirical relationship between gender conservatism and protectionism. That relationship has been evident since 2008 and it decidedly is not a product of Trump-era politics. That relationship holds among men and women and among Republicans and Democrats, and it is robust to the inclusion of controls meant to isolate gender conservatism from other expressions of conservatism. The recent rise of gender-conservative trade skepticism should be understood as elite politics catching up with the public rather than leading it.