Support for women in politics comes from across the ideological spectrum, as illustrated by the ideological diversity of political action committees devoted to the election of women. This study of major contributors to EMILY's List, which raises money for Democratic pro-choice women candidates, and WISH List, which raises money for Republican pro-choice women candidates, examines the policy preferences of both groups using ordinary least-squares regression. We hypothesized that the relatively liberal policy preferences of EMILY's List contributors, compared to the more conservative attitudes of WISH List contributors, were attributable to three types of explanations: symbolic politics, trust in government, and social status. Results of the analysis support both the symbolic politics explanation, represented by indicators of ideological affiliation and feminist consciousness, and the trust in government explanation. However, differences in the social and demographic characteristics of these two groups explain very little of their divergent policy preferences.
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