Student Union
- By Pete Musto
College Women Move Left, Men to the Right
It also shows the biggest gap politically between freshmen women and men.
The study comes from the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA). Started in 1966, the study polls freshmen at four-year colleges and universities around the country. Last year, the study gathered information from nearly 138,000 students at 184 schools.
HERI asks students how they identify politically: liberal, far left, conservative, far right, or moderate (“middle of the road”).
Traditionally, most students identify as "moderate."
But last year, when the 2016 U.S. presidential election between victor Donald J. Trump and Hillary Clinton occurred, 41 percent of the female students identified as liberal or far left.
This was the largest percentage of young women identifying as liberal in the more than 50-year history of the study.
By comparison, just 29 percent of males identified as left leaning. HERI says the difference has never been bigger.
Around 27 percent of male students and about 18 percent of female students identified as right-leaning this time.
Why the difference?
Kevin Eagan, a professor of education at UCLA and managing director of the HERI, says there were more liberal male students than females in the 1960s and 1970s. The number of female college students identifying as liberal has been steadily increasing since the 1990s.
Eagan says the number of young people identifying with a political party has much to do with the political leadership of those parties. For example, when conservative Republican Ronald Reagan was president in the 1980s, freshmen showed large decreases in the number of liberals.
Eagan says he believes that many young women identified with Hillary Clinton because she was a women and leader of the liberal Democratic Party.
Trump likely pushed women to the left through his negative actions and statements about women, Eagan said.
"With a candidate last year on the Republican side who was characterized by the media, perhaps rightfully so, as misogynistic and not really supportive of women,” he says, “I think that that just served to exacerbate this trend that we’re seeing related to women … shifting their political perspectives.”
Nesha Ruther, a freshman at the University of Wisconsin last year, says she does not identify as liberal simply because the Democratic presidential candidate was female.
Ruther says she first voted for independent and liberal senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders, in the primary elections that decided who would represent the Democratic Party in the presidential race. She says she liked his views about ending police violence against African-Americans and raising taxes on the wealthy.
But after he lost, Ruther grew concerned about Trump’s calls to reduce access to abortion and support for healthcare services that mainly serve women. So she supported Clinton, she says.
Ruther, who studies English, gender and Jewish studies, is a registered Democrat. She says women choose liberalism because it addresses issues that affect them, such as equal pay for equal work, and laws affecting reproductive health.
“Liberalism … is more appealing to women because it is a movement that is for progress,” she says. “So it’s not the way things have been previously, and in that way it is more geared towards the empowerment of women, the increased social mobility of women.”
Changes over time
Hans Noel is a professor of government at Georgetown University in Washington, who says most women are not liberals, and points out that 61 percent of white women without a college degree voted for Trump. But younger women who identify as feminists want to support politicians who support women’s rights, he says.
The political right in the U.S. has grown increasingly conservative, especially on issues like access to birth control, Noel says. And the political left has grown more feminist.
“What it means to be liberal, conservative, what it means to be Democratic or Republican, it evolves and changes,” he says. “It’s not like that suddenly being liberal has been pro-feminist. That’s been around for a while. But that’s certainly been a highlighted issue in the last several years, and particularly the last election.”
Noel adds that colleges and universities typically support more liberal ways of thinking. Younger women will side with the political movement that supports them, he said.
But he adds, it is important to note whether young people express their political beliefs at the voting polls: While people between age 18 and 35 represent 31 percent of U.S. voters, only about half of them voted in 2016.
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The 19-year-old University of Montana sprinter was among college athletes in the state who received an inquiry from Montana Together asking if she was interested in a name, image and likeness deal to support Sen. Jon Tester, a three-term Democrat seeking re-election. The group, which is not affiliated with the Tester campaign, offered from $400 to $2,400 to athletes willing to produce video endorsements.
Meskers, who is from Colorado but registered to vote in Montana, decided against the deal because she disagrees with Tester's votes on legislation involving transgender athletes in sports.
"I was like, OK, I believe that this is a political move to try to gain back some voters that he might have lost," Meskers said. "And me being a female student-athlete myself, I was not going to give my endorsement to someone who I felt didn't have the same support for me."
Professional athletes such as LeBron James, Colin Kaepernick and Stephen Curry have taken high-profile stances on hot-button topics and political campaigns in recent years, but college athletes are far less outspoken — even if money is available, according to experts in the NIL field. Being outwardly political can reflect on their school or endanger potential endorsement deals from brands that don't want controversy. It can certainly establish a public image for an athlete — for better or for worse — or lead to tensions with teammates and coaches who might not feel the same way.
There are examples of political activism by college athletes: A Texas Tech kicker revealed his support for former President Donald Trump on a shirt under his uniform at a game last week and a handful of Nebraska athletes a few days ago teamed up in a campaign ad against an abortion measure on the Tuesday's ballot.
Still, such steps are considered rare.
"It can be viewed as risky and there may be people telling them just don't even take that chance because they haven't made it yet," said Lauren Walsh, who started a sports branding agency 15 years ago. She said there is often too much to lose for themselves, their handlers and in some cases, their families.
"And these individuals still have to figure out what they're going to do with the rest of their lives, even those that do end up getting drafted," she added.
College coaches are not always as reticent. Auburn men's basketball coach Bruce Pearl has used social media to make it clear he does not support Kamala Harris, Trump's Democratic opponent in next week's presidential election. Oklahoma State football coach Mike Gundy once caused a stir with a star player for wearing a shirt promoting a far-right news outlet.
Blake Lawrence, co-founder of the NIL platform Opendorse, noted that this is the first presidential election in the NIL era, which began in July 2021. He said athletes are flocking to opportunities to help increase voter turnout in the 18-to-24 age demographic, adding that one of his company's partners has had 86 athletes post social media messages encouraging turnout through the first half of the week.
He said athletes are shying away from endorsing specific candidates or causes that are considered partisan.
"Student-athletes are, for the most part, still developing their confidence in endorsing any type of product or service," he said. "So if they are hesitant to put their weight behind supporting a local restaurant or an e-commerce product, then they are certainly going to be hesitant to use their social channels in a political way."
Giving athletes a voice
Many college athletes have opted to focus on drumming up turnout in a non-partisan manner or simply using their platforms to take stands that are not directly political in nature. Some of those efforts can be found in battleground states.
A progressive group called NextGen America said it had signed players in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Virginia to encourage voting among young people. Another organization, The Team, said it prepped 27 college athletes in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Arizona and Michigan to lead volunteer voter participation opportunities for students. The organization also said it got more than 625 coaches to sign a nonpartisan pledge to get their athletes registered to vote.
The Team's executive director is Joe Kennedy, a former coach who coordinated championship visits and other sporting events at the White House during President Barack Obama's administration. In early October, it hosted a Zoom event during which panelists such as NCAA President Charlie Baker and WNBA players Nneka Ogwumike and Natasha Cloud gave college athletes advice about using their platforms on campus.
In its early days, The Team seized upon momentum from the record turnout seen in the 2020 election. The NCAA that year said Division I athletes could have Election Day off from practice and play to vote. Lisa Kay Solomon, founder of the All Vote No Play campaign, said even if the athletes don't immediately take stands on controversial issues, it's important for them to learn how.
"It is a lot to ask our young people to feel capable and confident on skills they've never had a chance to practice," Solomon said. "We have to model what it means to practice taking risks, practice standing up for yourself, practice pausing to think about what are the values that you care about — not what social media is feeding into your brain, but what do you care about and how do you express that? And how do you do it in a way that honors the kind of future that you want to be a part of?"
Shut up and play?
Two years ago, Tennessee-Martin quarterback Dresser Winn said he would support a candidate in a local district attorney general race in what experts said was very likely the first political NIL deal by a college athlete.
There have been very few since.
The public criticism and fallout for athletes who speak out on politics or social issue can be sharp. Kaepernick, the Super Bowl-winning quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers, hasn't played in an NFL game since January 2017, not long after he began kneeling during the national anthem at games.
Meskers, the Montana sprinter, said political endorsements through NIL deals could create problems for athletes and their schools.
"I just think that NIL is going to run into a lot of trouble and a lot of struggles if they continue to let athletes do political endorsements," she said. "I just think it's messy. But I stand by NIL as a whole. I think it's really hard as a student athlete to create a financial income and support yourself."
Walsh said it's easier for wealthy and veteran stars like James and Ogwumike to take stands. James, the Los Angeles Lakers star, started More Than a Vote — an organization with a mission to "educate, energize and protect Black voters" — in 2020. He has passed the leadership to Ogwumike, who just finished her 13th year in the WNBA and also is the president of the Women's National Basketball Players Association. More than a Vote is focused on women's rights and reproductive freedom this year.
"They have very established brands," Walsh said. "They know who they are and they know what their political stance is. They know that they have a really strong following that -- there's always going to be haters, but they're also always going to have that strong following of people who listen to everything that they have to say."
Andra Gillespie, an associate professor at Emory University who teaches African American politics, also said it is rare that a college athlete would make a significant impact with a political stand simply because they tend to have a more regional platform than national. Even celebrities like Taylor Swift and Eminem are better at increasing turnout than championing candidates.
"They are certainly very beneficial in helping to drive up turnout among their fans," Gillespie said. "The data is less conclusive about whether or not they're persuasive – are they the ones who are going to persuade you to vote for a particular candidate?"
Athletes as influencers
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Political and social topics are not often broached, but this week six Nebraska athletes — five softball players and a volleyball player — appeared in an ad paid for by the group Protect Women and Children involving two initiatives about abortion laws on Tuesday's ballot.
The female athletes backed Initiative 434, which would amend the state constitution to prohibit abortions after the first trimester, with exceptions. Star softball player Jordy Bahl said on social media that the athletes were not paid.
A University of Montana spokesperson said two athletes initially agreed to take part in the NIL deal backing Tester. The school said one withdrew and the other declined to be interviewed.
For Meskers, deciding against the offer boiled down to Tester twice voting against proposals to bar federal funds from going to schools that allow transgender athletes to play women's sports, a prominent GOP campaign topic. Tester's campaign said the proposals were amendments to government spending packages, and he didn't want to play a role in derailing them as government shutdowns loomed.
"As a former public school teacher and school board member, Jon Tester believes these decisions should be made at the local level," a Tester spokesperson said. "He has never voted to allow men to compete against women."
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"I think especially as student athletes, we do have such a big voice and we do have a platform to use," she said. "So I think if you're encouraging people to do their civic duties and get up and go (vote), I think that's a great thing."
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