Since 1980, the Republican party has been bedeviled by a persistent gender gap in presidential elections, as GOP nominees have struggled with female voters. But Rand Paul is facing an intensification of this phenomenon: He can’t even win over Republican women. A recent CNN poll showed that the Kentucky senator is highly competitive among male primary voters; his 13 percent support put him neck-and-neck with top candidates like Scott Walker (13 percent), Marco Rubio (12 percent) and Jeb Bush (11 percent). Yet among Republican women, Paul’s share of the likely vote collapses to 2 percent. The small sample size of the poll might have exaggerated the margin of error, but the size of the gender gap Paul faces is far larger than that of any other politician in the poll.

Why is Paul so unpopular among women? His recent treatment of female interviewers can’t help. In February, during an interview with CNBC’s Kelly Evans about vaccines, he put his index finger to his lips, shushed her, and said, “Calm down a bit here.” In April, he scolded “Today” host Savannah Guthrie for asking him about his shifting positions, telling her, “You’ve editorialized.” And then there are his positions on women’s issues: He sponsored a “personhood” law, voted against reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act, and wants to ban abortion and defund Planned Parenthood.

But let’s set aside what women think about Paul’s personal qualities, which would require pure speculation, and what they think about his policies, which aren’t much different than his Republican competitors. Instead, consider what sets him apart from all the other candidates vying for the GOP nomination: his highly distinct political philosophy. While not a doctrinaire libertarian, Paul is by far the most libertarian-leaning candidate in the race. And there’s plenty of evidence that the libertarian worldview leaves most women cold, despite the fact that female intellectuals—Ayn Rand, most famously—have been pivotal in creating libertarianism.

The demographic profile of libertarians is sharply defined. According to a 2013 Public Religion Research Institute study, 7 percent of Americans identify as libertarian (though a 2014 Pew Research Center survey brought the number to 11 percent). Of those, two-thirds are men (68 percent) and nearly all are non-Hispanic whites (94 percent). That is, the typical libertarian is a white man. These firm demographic contours cry out for an explanation since, at first glance, there doesn’t seem much intrinsically white or male about libertarianism. Proclaiming itself a philosophy of individualism, with no overt celebrations of either patriarchy or racism, libertarianism still ends up being monochromatic and male.

Cathy Young, a libertarian journalist and author of the 1999 book Ceasefire!: Why Women and Men Must Join Forces to Achieve True Equality, said that “if you look at polls that actually ask people about the role of government, the people at the far end of the libertarian scale are definitely more likely to be male, maybe by a two-to-one margin. Why? I think that for a variety of reasons (whether innately psychological, culturally driven, or shaped by life experience), women are less likely to be drawn to political philosophies that emphasize self-reliance and risk. Women are also more likely to rely on government services, both as clients and as employees.”