Gender Gap in Political Alignment and Electoral Behaviour

1. Gender Gap in Political Alignment and Electoral Behaviour Professor Bernadette C. Hayes

2. Lecture Outline • Introduction • Gender Gap • Modern Gender Gap • Electoral Importance of the Gender Gap • Gender Gap in Political Attitudes • Theoretical Explanations for the Gender Gap

3. GENDER GAP • Difference in the proportion of women and men voting for any given candidate, generally winning candidate • (% women vote bush - % men vote bush) • Percentage difference between the two-party lead • (% men vote cons - % men vote labour) – (% women vote cons - % women vote labour)

4. The Traditional Gender Gap in Political Attitudes and Electoral Behaviour • Previous empirical research in the 1950s and 1960s found: • although men and women usually voted on the same lines when divergence occurred: • women more likely to vote for right-wing parties • greater concern for morality issues • opposition to armed conflict • Maurice Duverger (1955) benchmark European study of Norway, France and Germany; Angus Campell (1960), The American Voter

5. Modern Gender Gap in the US • Since the 1980s, a different and more pronounced gender gap has emerged in the US and elsewhere. In US • women notably less likely than men to identify with the republican party • First became evident in Reagan versus Carter presidential contest in 1980: • 8% fewer women than men voted for Reagan • 7 percentage points less likely to vote for bush in 2004 • Gender realigment: women voters have become more left-wing than men

6. INGLEHART AND NORRIS (RISING TIDE) • Gender gap in over 60 nations using World Values Survey • In most advanced industrial societies in the 1980s • women tended to be more right-wing than men • By the mid-1990s the gender gap had either: • converged (dealigned) • women moved significantly further to the left (realigned) • Traditional gender gap remained most common in: • Post-communist and developing societies

7. Similar Process Has Occurred in Britain (Norris in Evans and Norris) During post-war decade (1950s) women lent more strongly towards the Conservatives • the size of the gender gap was around 14% • since 1979, overall gender gap has been around 3% • In 2005 (Campbell and Lovenduski): • women were more likely to vote for Labour than men • 38% of women voted for Labour compared to 34% of men Generational Effect (Norris): • Labour support particularly strong among younger women • 43% of women aged 18-24 say vote labour as compared to 34% of young men

8. Electoral Importance of the Gender Gap • Demographic gap – women make up majority of the electorate • Turnout gap – women more likely to vote • Geographical location – women and men dispersed evenly across constituencies • Electoral volatility – women more likely to be undecided or floating voters

9. Political Attitudes: Women now considered an important source of distinctively liberal or “leftist” political attitudes • Traditionally, women more likely to reject the use of force either in • foreign affairs (war) • domestic policy (capital punishment) • However, now also different in relation to a range of moral issues (shapiro and mahajan): • more egalitarian and compassionate in relation to economic issues • markedly more support of government intervention for the poor • more pro-environment • more supportive of women and minority rights and reproductive rights • Still more conservative on a range of traditional moral issues: • availability of pornographic materials • drug usage • alternative lifestyles

10. Theoretical explanations for the gender gap • Issue-based explanations • Structural and situational explanations • Political mobilisation theories • Generational accounts

11. Issue-based explanations • Some evidence to suggest an increasing polarisation of men and women in relation to their political attitudes • Men more concerned with the economy • more supportive of military foreign policy • Women more concerned with compassionate issues: • government support for the poor • health • childcare • education • social welfare generally • As Democratic party seen as more supportive of public policies of a compassionate nature, more appealing to women

12. Structural and Situational Explanations • Traditionally, women: • less educated • more religious • not working • domestic and childcare responsibilities • According to this explanation gender is a basic social cleavage like any other • Women’s different lifestyles and responsibilities lead them to have: • different patterns of political participation • partisan/party loyalties • political priorities on a range of issues such as childcare, education and welfare • More importantly, once these gender-role differences decline, female voting behaviour come to resemble that of men • women become even more leftish than men

13. Political Mobilisation Theories • Focus on the development of the women’s movement • and the growth of feminist consciousness • Most developed by Pamela Conover who argues that: • having a feminist identity is significantly related to a range of domestic and policy preferences • although, overall, she found no major difference between women and men in relation to issues such as egalitarianism, individualism • having a feminist identity led women to be • more supportive of welfare spending • less supportive of military action

14. Pamela Conover • Conover argues that the American gender gap is due to: • Mobilisation of the women’s movement around issues of gender equality • and the growth of a feminist identity • She concludes that becoming a feminist may act as a catalyst that helps women to recognise their underlying female values

15. Generational Accounts • Emphasises the process of value-evolution associated with societal modernisation. Specifically focuses on intergenerational value change in post-industrial societies • Argues that common developments such as profound changes in: • traditional sex roles and educational and material resources and opportunities • have transformed the lifestyles and values of women, particularly among the younger generations in post-industrial societies • This younger generation of women spent their formative years during: • the height of the second-wave feminist movement • the social revolution in gender roles that occurred in the 1960s • changes in cultural values associated with feminism

16. Realignment of women’s political values among the younger generations • Are more left-wing than older women • and more left-wing than young men • Are the true-postmaterialists in that they emphasise: • environmental protection • strong support for government spending on the welfare state • public services • pacifism in the deployment of military force • This group likely to increase in the future as the older generations of women who still adopt a conservative position in relation to voting and policy issues die off