Early work explaining gender differences in political attitudes focus on resource-based explanations while more recent scholars look to social role theory. From a social role theory perspective, socialization encourages people to adopt a diffuse gender role, or a broad identification with being a man or a woman. From diffuse gender roles, women and men learn gendered expectations, which combine into gender ideology. Gender ideologies range from traditional, where the individual believes that men and women should exist in separate spheres with the man working outside the home and the woman working inside the home, to egalitarian, where the individual believes that men and women should work in and outside the home. Coupling this with the masculinized nature of politics, I expect that gender ideology is a key mechanism that connects diffuse gender roles to political attitudes. In this paper, I explore the relationship between gender ideology and partisanship. Using the National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1979 and the National Longitudinal Study of Youth Child and Young Adult sample, I investigate how gender ideology changes through the life course. I also look at how gender and gender ideology are related to political partisanship. Further, these survey data are unique in that they ask gender, gender ideology, and political partisanship of women and their children. Thus, I investigate the intergenerational impacts of gender ideology and partisanship from mothers to their children. Preliminary results highlight the importance of gender ideology on political partisanship. Even when controlling for the partisanship of the mother, children are less likely to be democrats as they have a more traditional gender ideology. These findings demonstrate the importance of childhood gender and political socialization for the development of political attitudes.
