Why "sex" may not be the best way to understand the gender gap in political behavior

Election coverage often refers to a "gender gap", meaning different vote choices between women and men. But such references are in fact talking about differences by sex. But does how we measure gender influence what we can say about people's political preferences? In new research, Amanda Bittner and Elizabeth Goodyear-Grant used surveys to capture people's subjective gender identity, and then examined respondents’ attitudes based on these reported identities. They find that not all women are the same, and neither are men: people’s idea of their own gender does not always fit with their sex, and their political attitudes are also based on where they consider themselves to be on the gender scale.