On February 17th, 2022, Gill Steel, a Professor of Political Science at the Institute for the Liberal Arts at Doshisha University, delivered a talk about her forthcoming book, “What Women Want: Voting Preferences in Japan, Britain, and the United States.”

Professor Steel’s presentation began with a historical overview of voting trends in Japan, the United Kingdom, and United States. She challenged the conventional wisdom of a gender gap in voting and argued that policy preferences cannot be explained by a single theory alone. Her statistical analysis demonstrated that gender differences in vote choice are surprisingly limited. A broader framework is necessary to understand the complexities of how one’s identity impacts politics, one that “moves much further beyond the gender binary.” Steel argued that focusing on voting gaps between men and women can be misleading, perpetuating conventional assumptions that women identify as mothers or as part of a greater family unit. In order to understand women’s voting, researchers must contextualize their preferences within broader electoral and cultural contexts.

Professor Steel then articulated her own logic of how gender affects voting preferences, focusing on long-term party identification embedded within distinct national and class contexts. She discussed several examples of how the visibility of women and political rhetoric can shape the way female voters are understood. For example, in the U.K., political ads often feature women, while in Japan they often display little to no female participation in the decision-making process. In her study of American local print media, Steel found that women’s issues receive more attention during times of greater social conscience. However, this can change drastically from one election cycle to the next. Steel also noted the use of symbolic politics to subvert the deeper need for understanding voters beyond their gender identity.

Following the presentation, a lively question and answer period was moderated by Professor Phillip Lipscy, the Director of the Centre for the Study of Global Japan. We would like to thank Professor Gill Steel for sharing her important research, as well as the virtual audience that was in attendance from around the globe for an engaged Q&A session.