With this blog post, AEI introduces a feature that will run regularly during Women’s History Month. The idea is to focus on women’s progress as seen through the prism of survey data. We begin with a few posts on some of the earliest questions about women in politics.

In 1937, the Gallup Organization asked people this question in in-person interviews: “Would you vote for a woman for President if she qualified in every other respect?” Only a third nationally said they would. Men and women did not differ significantly in their responses. Gallup soon changed the question’s awkward wording, and the new question has become part of an extensive battery of questions Gallup has asked over the years about willingness to vote for different groups of qualified people. 

For the first time in 1958, a majority, 54 percent, said they would be willing to vote for a qualified woman for president. But as late as 1975, nearly half of Americans (48 percent) told NORC interviewers that most men were better suited emotionally for politics than were most women. Fifty-one percent of women and 45 percent of men agreed. The last time Gallup asked its question in 2019, 94 percent nationally said they would be willing to vote for a qualified woman, including 97 percent of Democrats, 94 percent of independents, and 90 percent of Republicans. Once again, men and women did not differ in their responses. Americans are ready to have a woman in the Oval Office.

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