Same Race, Different Paths: Socialization, Orientation, and the Black Partisan Gender Gap

Abstract

Black women have long anchored Black political cohesion, yet little explains why a gender gap persists within a group marked by strong Democratic loyalty. Drawing on historical and sociological work, we argue that Black women’s collective-first orientation—shaped by gendered social roles across enslavement, Jim Crow, and modern civic life—heightens the political significance of the antecedents of Black Democratic partisanship: racial identity salience, perceived discrimination, and racially homogenous social networks. Using an original national survey of 4,200 Black Americans, we find that the partisan gender gap widens because the composition of their social networks more strongly shapes Black women’s political preferences. Accounting for racial identity salience and perceived discrimination substantially reduces the gender gap. These findings illuminate how racialized gender roles structure the pathways through which group-based norms translate into partisan behavior, providing a mechanism for intragroup variation and guiding more nuanced strategies for political engagement and mobilization.