The Gender Gap in voting behaviours

Résumé du document

European women first acquired the right to vote in 1906 in Finland. After the First World War, women were given the right to vote in a certain number of European countries. In the UK, it was gained in two stages: first in 1918, it was initially given to married women, women householders and women university graduates aged thirty years or over. In France, General de Gaulle gave the right to vote to women by decree in 1944, after the Senate had blocked proposals aimed at enfranchising French women several times. Many hoped, and others feared that women would vote as a bloc, creating thus a distinctive "women's vote". During the post-war era, it was established in political science that women proved more rightwing than men. The "gender gap" is a rather large phrase that can be used to refer to different phenomena, including divergences between men and women in turnout, political attitudes, social values, party identification and policy concerns. Concretely, we will focus on the difference in voting choice, which is certainly the most common usage. There can be divergences of behaviour between genders concerning a given issue or candidate. Gender may have a direct effect (for instance, if genders differ on their vision of ecology, this can influence their choice for Green parties), or an indirect effect on voting behaviour (lifestyles for example can make the voting choices diverge). It is not a fixed phenomenon, and the "gender gap" has constantly moved, according to eras and countries. For instance, the trend is completely inversed in countries such as Netherlands, where women have always been more left-wing than men. But we decided to focus on western European countries, as it's obvious that the gender gap is linked to culture.

Extraits

[...] The effects of Catholicism on voting are very sensitive among women, whereas they are almost nil among male voters. On the other hand, Feminism models the soul of the younger, who are more turned towards modernity. Feminism, as equality among genders, is radically opposed to the sexist ideological ideas of the Front. According to Mariette Sineau, the reactionary morality of the National Front, based on the Man supremacy, corresponds to a “macho- racism” which lives up to its electorate's expectations. [...]

[...] But gender differences have never been as noticeable as the classic electoral divisions of class, religion or region. (One of the proof is, according to Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris, that there were no popular “women's parties”). During the 1980s, a process of gender “dealignment” has been detected in these same countries: women's voting choices and party preferences tended to become closer to men's ones. The question is thus: What is the gender gap in voting behaviours and how has it moved since women's enfranchisement? [...]

[...] “Women differ from men in their political behaviour only in being somewhat more apathetic, parochial, and conservative” (Almond and Verba 1989). Both genders experienced nevertheless crosscutting cleavages (class, religion Until the 1980s, this trend has been observed in most of the Western European countries. But then, the women's traditional conservatism tended to weaken. The old thesis was no longer so evident. might conclude that sex differences in politics tend to diminish as a society reaches an advanced industrial phase.” (Inglehart 1977). Actually, women progressively tipped over left-winging, and then an alignment with men's behaviours in voting was observed. [...]

[...] France is a particular case as the gender gap has been rekindled in an opposition to the National Front of Jean-Marie Le Pen. Women are now more and more involved in public life, what promises to have a significant impact for the power of women at the ballot box. The gender gap has above all served to attract media attention and open public debate about gender issues, to encourage parties to attract the “women's and then to increase the women's nomination for public offices. [...]

[...] The analysis for the major parties shows striking cross-national variations. In Britain, Italy and France for instance, women are more right-wing than men, whereas in Netherlands, Denmark, the United States and Canada, they proved more left- wing than men in their voting choice. The summary gender-gap varies in strength as well as in direction, with Britain proving the most conservative of all the countries under comparison. That's why we will first particularly focus on this case, which is a kind of archetype of the phenomenon. [...]