Sorry, Ladies, It's True

“It is not really surprising that this welfare state should breed a politics not of “justice” or “fairness” but of “compassion,” which contemporary liberalism has elevated into the most important civic virtue. Women tend to be more sentimental, more risk-averse and less competitive than men—yes, it’s Mars vs. Venus—and therefore are less inclined to be appreciative of free-market economics, in which there are losers as well as winners. College-educated women—the kind who attend Democratic conventions—are also more “permissive” and less “judgmental” on such issues as homosexuality, capital punishment, even pornography.”              - Irving Kristol, “The Feminization of the Democrats,” The Wall Street Journal (September 9, 1996): p. A16 

“Citing marriage as ‘a very important financial divider,’ the American Enterprise Institute's Doug Besharov suggests more married women did not vote for Dole because of a widespread sense of societal insecurity: ‘It is not that they distrust their husband, but they have seen divorce all around them and know they could be next.’ The Polling Company's Kellyanne Fitzpatrick is categorical: ‘Women see government as their insurance.’ (Perhaps significantly, of the 24 million individuals working in government and in semi-governmental non-profit jobs, 14 million—58 percent—are women.)”  -The Richmond Times Dispatch, December 5, 1996 

“Federal Government expenditures remained remarkably constant until the 1920’s. In fact, as has been widely noted by public choice scholars, World War I was the first war after which per capita government expenditures did not return back to their pre-war levels and by the end of the 1920’s the growth trend that we are so familiar with today had begun. To explain this timing, some point to the effect that the seemingly successful economy wide regulations during the war had on people’s beliefs about the role of government (Higgs, 1987). 

We propose that giving women the right to vote changed the size of government. We examine several indicators of the size and scope of government, from state government expenditures and revenues to voting index scores for Federal House and Senate members from 1870 to 1940.” 

“How Dramatically Did Women’s Suffrage Change the Size and Scope of Government?” – Scientific Research Paper by John R. Lott Jr. and Larry Kenny, September 1998 

(Click on this link to download a copy of the 75 page research paper: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=160530)