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Understanding How Women Vote 10 and both Iraq wars.26 Women are more supportive than men of the use of military force if the stakes are humanitarian and there is approval from the United Nations, but they are far less supportive if the conflict is eco- nomic or strategic and unilateral. On the other hand, men’s approval of the use of force does not vary based on these conditions.27 Men and women also have different foreign policy goals. Men are more concerned with protecting weaker nations from foreign aggression, main- taining superior military power, and defending the security of our allies, and women are more concerned with combating world hunger, strength- ening the United Nations, and improving the global environment.28 THE 1990s AND SOCCER MOMS By the early 1990s, it was clear that the gender gap was no fluke. Women were more likely than men to identify as Democrats and to vote for Demo- cratic candidates for president and Congress. In the 1990, 1992, and 1994 elections, the gender gap was consistent across a variety of demographic factors, including race, age, income, religion, and region.29 The gender gap was intensified in the wake of the Clarence Thomas hearings. In 1991, President George H. W. Bush nominated Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court to replace retiring Justice Thurgood Mar- shall. Women’s organizations opposed Thomas’s nomination from the start, based on his conservative positions on issues like abortion, but opposition peaked when allegations surfaced that Thomas had sexually harassed Anita Hill when they had both worked at the Equal Employ- ment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Hill was called to testify in front of an all-male Senate committee and was asked detailed, embarrassing questions about the alleged harassment. Thomas vehemently denied the allegations and called the hearings a “high-tech lynching.”30 Despite Hill’s allegations and those of three other women who were not allowed to testify, Thomas was confirmed in a 52 to 48 vote. However, the hearings themselves highlighted two important issues for women: sexual harassment and the lack of women in Congress. Hill’s testimony politicized sexual harassment by giving a name to what many women had experienced and encouraged women to speak up, evidenced by a doubling in sexual harassment claims to the EEOC from 1991 to 1998.31 Furthermore, millions of Americans watched Hill, a 35-year-old African American woman, testify in embarrassing detail about sexual advances made by her supervisor and defend against attacks from the committee