Social change and women’s left vote. The role of employment, education, and marriage in the gender vote gap

Publication type

Journal Article

Authors

Publication date

August 8, 2024

Summary:

The “modern” gender vote gap – where women are generally more supportive of left parties than men – is established in many Western democracies. Whilst it is linked to societal changes, and in particular the transformation of gender roles and relations, scholars still grapple with its underlying mechanisms. This paper tests one mechanism currently untested in existing accounts: that women’s specific experiences in less traditional social statuses – in employment, education, or out of marriage – drive their support for the left. Analyses using German, Swiss, and English panel data do show differences in left party support between men and women, and amongst women, according to these social statuses. However, we do not find evidence that these occur because of these experiences directly. Rather, our findings indicate that left-leaning women self-select into certain life trajectories. This suggests that women’s shifting political views due to societal change have corresponding changes in individual life choices.

Published in

Comparative Political Studies

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1177/00104140241271123

ISSN

104140

Subjects

Notes

Online Early

Open Access

© The Author(s) 2024.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the Sage and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).

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