Attitudinal Consistency Among Political Elites

Abstract

This study looks at attitudes toward the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) held by two geographically distant groups of political elites. My purpose is to examine attitudinal consistency with respect to feminist issues and to ascertain the extent to which approval of the ERA is related to support for a variety of feminist public policy goals. Moderate relationships are found between the feminist policy indices and support for ERA but the indices are more closely related to positive attitudes toward the women's movement. Partial correlational analysis shows that the relationships between support for ERA and support for the women's issues become weaker in each sample when controlling for the effects of approval of the women's movement. Although the existence of a feminist ideology seems supported by the data, doubt remains about the wisdom of assuming that approval of the ERA is concomitant with endorsement of specific political issues which would enhance legal equality with political or social equality.