Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-cphqk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-02T10:50:49.311Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Cultural Sources of the Gender Gap in Voter Turnout

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 January 2020

Ruth Dassonneville Open the ORCID record for Ruth Dassonneville [Opens in a new window]  and
Filip Kostelka Open the ORCID record for Filip Kostelka [Opens in a new window]
Ruth Dassonneville*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of Montreal, Canada
Filip Kostelka
Affiliation:
Department of Government, University of Essex, Colchester, United Kingdom
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Recent publications argue that the traditional gender gap in voting has decreased or reversed in many democracies. However, this decrease may apply only to some types of elections. Building on prior studies, this article hypothesizes that although women participate at the same or higher rates than men in national elections, they participate less in supranational elections. The authors investigate this possibility empirically by analyzing the evolution of the gender gap in voter turnout in elections to the European Parliament (EP). The article makes three important contributions. First, it shows the presence and stability of the traditional gender gap in EP elections. Secondly, it finds that gender differences in political interest are the main source of this gender gap. Thirdly, these gender differences in political interest are, in turn, context dependent. They are strongly associated with cultural gender differences, which are captured through differences in boys’ and girls’ maths scores.

Keywords

gender gapvoter turnoutEuropean Parliament electionsdescriptive representationcultural gender differences
Type
Article
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 51 , Issue 3 , July 2021 , pp. 1040 - 1061
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Almond, G and Verba, S (1963) The Civic Culture. Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Armingeon, K and Schädel, L (2015) Social inequality in political participation: the dark sides of individualisation. West European Politics 38(1), 1–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baker, R et al. (2010) Research synthesis: AAPOR report on online panels. Public Opinion Quarterly 74(4), 711–781.Google Scholar
Beauregard, K (2014) Gender, political participation and electoral systems: a cross- national analysis. European Journal of Political Research 53(3), 617–634.Google Scholar
Beauregard, K (2018) Women's representation and gender gaps in political participation: do time and success matter in a cross-national perspective. Politics, Groups, and Identities 6(2), 237–263.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bennett, LLM and Earl Bennett, S (1989) Enduring gender differences in political interest The impact of socialization and political dispositions. American Politics Quarterly 17(1), 105–122.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bennett, SE and Bennett, LLM (1991) From traditional to modern conceptions of gender equality in politics: gradual change and lingering doubts. Western Political Quarteerly 45(1), 93–111.Google Scholar
Blais, A (2000) To Vote or not to Vote? The Merits and Limits of Rational Choice Theory. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blinder, A (1973) Wage discrimination: reduced form and structural estimates. Journal of Human Resources 8(4), 436–455.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campbell, A (1960) Surge and decline: a study of electoral change. Public Opinion Quarterly 24(3), 397–418.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campbell, A et al. (1960) The American Voter. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Campbell, DE and Wolbrecht, C (2006) See jane run: women politicians as role models for adolescents. Journal of Politics 68(2), 233–247.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carreras, M (2017) High-profile female executive candidates and the political engagement of women: a multilevel analysis. Political Research Quarterly 70(1), 172–183.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carreras, M (2018) Why no gender gap in electoral participation? A civic duty explanation. Electoral Studies 52, 36–45.Google Scholar
Cawvey, M et al. (2017) Personality and political behavior. In Thompson, WR (ed.), Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics (Online). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Chiao, JY, Bowman, NE and Gill, H (2008) The political gender gap: gender bias in facial inferences that predict voting behavior. PLoS ONE 3(10), e3666.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Childs, S (2004) A British gender gap? Gender and political participation [in en]. The Political Quarterly 75(4), 422–424.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coffé, H (2013) Women stay local, men go national and global? Gender differences in political interest. Sex Roles 69(5–6), 323–338.Google Scholar
Córdova, A and Rangel, G (2017) Addressing the gender gap the effect of compulsory voting on women's electoral engagement. Comparative Political Studies 50(2), 264–290.Google Scholar
Dassonneville, R and Hooghe, M (2017) Voter turnout decline and stratification: quasi- experimental and comparative evidence of a growing educational gap. Politics 37(2), 184–200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dassonneville, R and Kostelka, F (2019) “Replication Data for: The Cultural Sources of the Gender Gap in Voter Turnout”, https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/V6HXIZ, Harvard Dataverse, V1, UNF:6:8TAADWOCuUlw8ZnxgxJBqQ== [fileUNF]Google Scholar
Dassonneville, R and McAllister, I (2018) Gender, political knowledge and descriptive representation: the impact of long-term socialization. American Journal of Political Science 62(2), 249–265.Google Scholar
Desposato, S and Norrander, B (2009) The gender gap in Latin America: contextual and individual influences on gender and political participation. British Journal of Political Science 39(1), 141–162.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dickerson, A, McIntosh, S and Valente, C (2015) Do the maths: an analysis of the gender gap in mathematics in Africa. Economics of Education Review 46(1), 1–22.Google Scholar
Dow, JK (2009) Gender differences in political knowledge: distinguishing characteristics- based and returns-based differences. Political Behavior 31(1), 117–136.Google Scholar
Duverger, M (1955) La participation des femmes à la vie politique. Paris: UNESCO.Google Scholar
Engeli, I, Ballmer-Cao, T-H and Giugni, M (2006) Gender gap and turnout in the 2003 federal elections. Swiss Political Science Review 12(4), 217–242.Google Scholar
Fagan, C, Rubery, J and Smith, M (2003) Women's Employment in Europe: Trends and Prospects. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Fairlie, RW (2005) An extension of the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition technique to logit and probit models. Journal of Economic and Social Measurement 30(4), 305–316.Google Scholar
Falk, A and Hermle, J (2018) Relationship of gender differences in preferences to economic development and gender equality. Science 362(6412), eaas9899.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Flickinger, RS and Studlar, DT (2007) One Europe, many electorates? Models of turnout in European parliament elections after 2004. Comparative Political Studies 40(4), 383–404.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fortin-Rittberger, J (2016) Cross-national gender gaps in political knowledge. How much is due to context? Political Research Quarterly 69(3), 391–402.Google ScholarPubMed
Fraile, M (2014) Do women know less about politics than men? The gender gap in political knowledge in Europe. Social Politics 21(2), 261–289.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fraile, M and Gomez, R (2015) Why does Alejandro know more about politics than Catalina? Explaining the Latin American gender gap in political knowledge. British Journal of Political Science 47(1), 91–112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fraile, M and Gomez, R (2017) Bridging the enduring gender gap in political interest in Europe: the relevance of promoting gender equality. European Journal of Political Research 56(3), 601–618.Google Scholar
Galais, C and Blais, A (2018) Gender and the civic duty to vote. Paper prepared for delivery at the 2018 ECPR General Conference in Hamburg. Available from https://ecpr.eu/Filestore/PaperProposal/1d86ce1c-629f-4c21-ab78-c07405db4ef0.pdf (accessed 28 March 2019).Google Scholar
Gallego, A (2009) Where else does turnout decline come from? Education, age, generation and period effects in three European countries. Scandinavian Political Studies 32(1), 23–44.Google Scholar
Gelman, A and Hill, J (2007) Data Analysis Using Regression and Multilevel/Hierarchical Models. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Geys, B (2006) Explaining voter turnout: a review of aggregate-level research. Electoral Studies 25(4), 637–663.Google Scholar
Giolla, EM and Kajonius, PJ (2019) Sex differences in personality are larger in gender equal countries: replicating and extending a surprising finding. International Journal of Psychology 54(6), 705–711.Google Scholar
Glatte, S and de Vries, CE (2015) Gender Norms and Gender Gaps in Political Participation in Unified Germany. Available from http://catherinedevries.eu/Glatte_DeVries_Feb2015.pdf.Google Scholar
Greene, Z and O'Brien, DZ (2016) Diverse parties, diverse agendas? Female politicians and the parliamentary party's role in platform formation. European Journal of Political Research 55(3), 435–453.Google Scholar
Guiso, L et al. (2008) Culture, gender, and math. Science 320(5880), 1164–1165.Google ScholarPubMed
Heath, A et al. (1999) Between first and second order: a comparison of voting behaviour in European and local elections in Britain. European Journal of Political Research 35(3), 389–414.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huddy, L et al. (1997) The effect of interviewer gender on the survey response. Political Behavior 19(3), 197–220.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hyde, JS and Mertz, JE (2009) Gender, culture, and mathematics performance. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106(22), 8801–8807.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Inglehart, R and Norris, P (2003) Rising Tide: Gender Equality and Cultural Change around the World. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Inter-Parliamentary Union (2016) Women in National Parliaments. Available from http://archive.ipu.org/wmn-e/world.htm.Google Scholar
Jann, B (2006) Fairlie: Stata module to generate nonlinear decomposition of binary outcome differentials. Available from http://ideas.repec.org/c/boc/bocode/s456727.html.Google Scholar
Jann, B (2008) The Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition for linear regression models. Stata Journal 8(4), 453–479.Google Scholar
Karp, JA and Banducci, SA (2008) When politics is not just a man's game: women's representation and political engagement. Electoral Studies 27(1), 105–115.Google Scholar
Karp, JA and Brockington, D (2005) Social desirability and response validity: a comparative analysis of overreporting voter turnout in five countries. The Journal of Politics 67(3), 825–840.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kim, CH (2010) Decomposing the change in the wage gap between white and black men over time, 1980–2005: an extension of the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition method. Sociological Methods & Research 38(4), 619–651.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kittilson, MC (2016) Gender and political behavior. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics. doi: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.71.Google Scholar
Kostelka, F, Blais, A and Gidengil, E (2019) Has the gender gap in voter turnout really disappeared? West European Politics 42(3), 437–463.Google Scholar
Ladam, C, Harden, JJ and Windett, JH (2018) Prominent role models: high-profile female politicians and the emergence of women as candidates for public office. American Journal of Political Science 63(2), 369–381.Google Scholar
Lovenduski, J and Norris, P (2003) Westminster women: the politics of presence. Political Studies 51(1), 84–102.Google Scholar
Malhotra, N and Krosnick, JA (2007) The effect of survey mode and sampling on inferences about political attitudes and behavior: comparing the 2000 and 2004 ANES to internet surveys with nonprobability samples. Political Analysis 15(3), 286–323.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mansbridge, J (1999) Should blacks represent blacks and women represent women? A contingent “Yes”. Journal of Politics 61(3), 628–657.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marien, S, Dassonneville, R and Hooghe, M (2015) How second order are local elections? Voting motives and party preferences in Belgian municipal elections. Local Government Studies 41(6), 898–916.Google Scholar
Marien, S, Hooghe, M and Quintelier, E (2010) Inequalities in non-institutionalised forms of political participation: a multi-level analysis of 25 countries. Political Studies 58(1), 187–213.Google Scholar
Mayer, N (2010) Sociologie des Comportements Politiques. Paris: Armand Colin.Google Scholar
Mo, CH (2015) The consequences of explicit and implicit gender attitudes and candidate quality in the calculations of voters. Political Behavior 37(2), 357–395.Google Scholar
Morgan, J and Buice, M (2013) Latin American attitudes toward women in politics: the influence of elite cues, female advancement, and individual characteristics. American Political Science Review 107(4), 644–662.Google Scholar
Morin-Chassé, A et al. (2017) How to survey about electoral turnout? The efficacy of the face-saving response items in 19 different contexts. Political Science Research and Methods 5(3), 575–584.Google Scholar
Nollenberger, N, Rodrìguez-Planas, N and Sevilla, A (2016) The math gender gap: the role of culture. American Economic Review 106(5), 257–261.Google Scholar
Norris, P (1991) Gender differences in political participation in Britain: traditional, radical and revisionist models. Government and Opposition 26(1), 56–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Norris, P (2002) Democratic Phoenix: Reinventing Political Activism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Norris, P and Inglehart, R (2001) Cultural obstacles to equal representation. Journal of Democracy 12(3), 126–140.Google Scholar
Nosek, BA et al. (2009) National differences in gender-science stereotypes predict national sex differences in science and math achievement. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106(26), 10593–10597.Google ScholarPubMed
Oaxaca, R (1973) Male-female wage differentials in urban labor markets. International Economic Review 14(3), 693–709.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paxton, P, Green, J and Hughes, M (2008) Women in Parliament, 1945–2003: Cross-National Dataset. ICPSR24340-v1. Ann-Arbor, MI: Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research.Google Scholar
Paxton, P and Kunovich, S (2003) Women's political representation: the importance of ideology. Social Forces 82(1), 87–113.Google Scholar
Rai, TS (2018) No gender differences in early math cognition. Science 361(6401), 464–465.Google Scholar
Reif, K and Schmitt, H (1980) Nine second-order national elections – A conceptual framework for the analysis of European election results. European Journal of Political Research 8(1), 3–44.Google Scholar
Sartori, L, Tuorto, D and Ghigi, R (2017) The social roots of the gender gap in political participation: the role of situational and cultural constraints in Italy. Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society 24(3), 221–247.Google Scholar
Schlozman, KL, Burns, N and Verba, S (1994) Gender and the pathways to participation: the role of resources. Journal of Politics 56(4), 963–990.Google Scholar
Schwartz, CR and Han, H (2014) The reversal of the gender gap in education and trends in marital dissolution. American Sociological Review 79(4), 605–629.Google ScholarPubMed
Selb, P and Munzert, S (2013) Voter overrepresentation, vote misreporting, and turnout bias in postelection surveys. Electoral Studies 32(1), 186–196.Google Scholar
Setzler, M (Forthcoming) Measuring bias against female political leadership. Politics & Gender doi: 10.1017/S1743923X18000430.Google Scholar
Smets, K and van Ham, C (2013) The embarrassment of riches? A meta-analysis of individual-level research on voter turnout. Electoral Studies 32(2), 344–359.Google Scholar
Stadelmann-Steffen, I and Koller, D (2014) What type of resources? Household effects and female electoral participation. Swiss Political Science Review 20(4), 529–549.Google Scholar
Stockemer, D (2017) What affects voter turnout? A review article/meta-analysis of Aggregate research. Government and Opposition 52(4), 698–722.Google Scholar
Streb, MJ et al. (2008) Social desirability effects and support for a female American president. Public Opinion Quarterly 72(1), 76–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomas, M (2012) The complexity conundrum: why hasn't the gender gap in subjective political competence closed? Canadian Journal of Political Science 45(2), 337–358.Google Scholar
Tingsten, HL (1937) Political Behavior: Studies in Election Statistics. London: P.S.Google Scholar
Verba, S and Nie, NH (1972) Participation in America. Political Democracy and Social Equality. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Walter, JG (2018) The adequacy of measures of gender roles attitudes: a review of current measures in omnibus surveys. Quality & Quantity 52(2), 829–848.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wolbrecht, C and Campbell, DE (2007) Leading by example: female members of parliament as political role models. American Journal of Political Science 51(4), 921–939.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: PDF

Dassonneville and Kostelka supplementary material

Dassonneville and Kostelka supplementary material

Download Dassonneville and Kostelka supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 221.8 KB
Supplementary material: Link

Dassonneville and Kostelka Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/V6HXIZ
Link