ABSTRACT
In public affairs, much more than in marketing or fashion, women are free to decide whether or not they will participate or even take an interest. Without endangering their self-respect or the respect of others, women can, to a greater extent than men, get through life without participating in, or having opinions about, public affairs. The highly informed woman of high social status is twice as likely to emerge as a public affairs leader as the equally informed woman of low status. For married women, the important male influentials are their husbands, while for single women, fathers play the important role in opinion changes. Female opinion leaders, on the other hand, are mainly friends and neighbors of the respondents. Few of them are members of the respondent’s own family. The non-gregarious woman rarely is an opinion leader in public affairs.
