The Ideological Gender Gap in Europe (1973-2009)

In recent years, electoral studies and public opinion research have started disputing the notion of ‘traditional gender gap’, which cast women in Western democracies as being politically less participant, ideologically more conservative and more often voting for right-wing parties than men. However, evidence of an emerging ‘modern gender gap’ – with women now oriented more to the left, both in electoral and ideological terms – is far from being unanimous in the relevant literature. This paper intends to shed new light on this issue by analysing the evolution of five different dimensions of the gender gap over 20 years and across 15 countries (the former EU-15). These - partially new - dimensions are: (1) Ideological assertiveness; (2) Ideological dispersion; (3) Ideological (L-R) orientation; (4) Perception of party ideology; (5) Voting for moderate vs. radical parties. Three rival hypotheses will be tested for each dimension: (h1): Persistence (traditional gender alignment); (h2): Convergence (gender dealignment); (h3): Divergence (new gender alignment). Final interaction models will include all social and political factors – such as age, education, religion, occupation, marital status, social class, interest in politics, and party ID – that are central in theoretical explanations both of ideological and electoral gender gaps. This longitudinal and comparative analysis will be conducted using a European Elections Studies (EES) pooled database (1989-2009).