Is There a "Women's Voice" in Politics?

Comparative research indicates that in post-industrial countries, as well as in developing and undeveloped countries, men and women participate in politics in different ways (Inglehart and Norris, 2003).

Voting Patterns: Is There a Gender Gap?
When women were granted the right to vote in the U.S. and most European countries in the early twentieth century, there was some belief - or fear - that a "women's voice" would develop and alter the balance of political power. Gender, however, did not outweigh social class and religion as highly influential variables. Nevertheless, in the period between the Second World War and the 1980s, there was a traditional gender gap in Western Europe and the U.S.: while women and men turned out to the polls in similar numbers, women tended to vote more heavily for conservative parties (right of center). In Italy, Germany, and Britain, for instance, women's support for rightwing parties was 10% greater than for leftwing parties. The reason is that these women held more conservative values and were more religious. In Italy and France, for instance, they were more frequent church-goers, which shaped their electoral preferences since the churches they attended were affiliated with right-of-center parties.

As early as the 1970s, this pattern changed in the U.S. as female voters began leaning leftward (towards the Democratic Party). Patterns were mixed in Europe in the 1980s, with women's voting preferences conservative in some countries and liberal in others. Gradually, the traditional gap disappeared. In the last decade of the twentieth century and the early years of the current century, there were signs of a "modern gender gap" characterized by greater numbers of women voting for leftwing parties. While the gender gap is not large, it is stable. If, at the beginning of the 1970s, women's political stances in Western Europe were to the right of men's, by the mid-1990s, women were voting further left on the spectrum than men, whose positions remained unchanged. One indication of the recent leftward leanings of women is the fact that in 64 out of 70 Western countries (some of them undeveloped), more women than men support economic ideas associated with the left, such as increased government control of the economy, stronger government restrictions on private industry, and maintenance of government-sponsored social benefits.

The change is most apparent among young women. Older women are still more conservative-leaning, while their younger counterparts tend to vote for leftwing parties and adopt their social and economic world views. This is particularly evident in post-industrial societies that have experienced modernization; women's lives there have changed significantly, along with their conceptions of gender roles in society and in their personal lives.

Generally, the left-oriented women are younger, have higher levels of education, and are employed. The women with conservative political preferences tend to be older, less educated, not employed outside the home, lower on the socioeconomic scale, divorced, and religious (in most cases Catholic or Jewish). These characteristics, while typical of societies of every sort, are most prominent in post-industrial countries. We can conclude that as the modernization process expands, this trend will become more pronounced. Countries with a largely traditional religious population (Islamic countries among them), in which women's interest rarely extends beyond everyday matters, are still not part of this trend. Nevertheless, there are some signs of change in the status of women in these societies as well.

Possible Explanations for the "Modern Gender Gap"

• Secularization: In the past, the electoral views of women in Western European countries were shaped primarily by their religious affinities. As these countries become increasingly secularized, the ties to religion are weakening, along with support for the rightwing Christian parties identified with them.
• Changes in the roles of women in the family, the labor market, and education: These changes have altered priorities, particularly among wealthy, educated women, as reflected in trends in women's electoral preferences.
• Growth of the "new politics": Society's traditional dividing lines (class and religion) began to fade with the arrival of the new politics, and new issues rose to the surface, among them environmental quality, women's rights, and quality of life. Interest in these issues sparked a change in values in modern society, particularly among the young, wealthy, and educated. Among the newly adopted values in post-materialistic society are liberty, self-fulfillment, and gender equality. Since leftwing political parties were an expression of this change in values, the transition to adopting post-materialistic values was accompanied by support for leftwing political parties. These parties, which promote the ideas and policies of a welfare state, are more attractive to women who, by virtue of their family roles and socioeconomic status, are the primary recipients of welfare services (childcare and health benefits, for example). Leftwing parties also actively promote gender equality by reserving top-level positions for women and setting quotas for representation by women. Conservative rightwing parties, on the other hand, encourage women to maintain their traditional role as mothers and housewives, oppose affirmative action, and aim for minimal government involvement in the area of welfare.
  

Other Forms of Political Participation
Classic research on political participation in the 1970s and later came to the definitive conclusion that in every Western democracy gender is a relevant factor in political activity: men are more politically active than women. That conclusion is still valid today, despite the changes that have taken place in the social status of women, and it is evidenced more prominently in non-conventional forms of political participation (such as protest activities) than in conventional forms (such as voting).

Voter Participation Rates
Studies conducted in the 1970s in the U.S. and Western Europe found that women had lower voting rates than men. That gap has been closing, however, since the 1980s, and in some instances, the women's voter turnout has even surpassed that of men.

Data gathered worldwide reveal the following: (For more information, visit: http://www.idea.int/gender/vt.cfm)

• In some countries, there is no gap between men's and women's voter turnout. In Britain, for example, the overall turnout for the Parliamentary elections of 2005 was 61%, with 61% of all women and 62% of all men voting. Sweden has recorded equal voting rates since the 1970s, and in some races women out-voted men to a slight degree - in 1998, nearly 83% of Swedish women voted, as opposed to 81.5% of the men.
• In the 1970s, male voters outnumbered female voters in the U.S. Since 1984, however, this gap has "inverted," and more women have been turning out at the polls. In the 2004 presidential elections, 60% of American women reported voting, as opposed to 56% of American men. (For more information, visit: http://www.cawp.rutgers.edu/Facts5.html)
• Another country that has reduced its gender gap in voting in recent years is Finland. In 1945, the voting rate for men was 9% higher than for women. The gap began to close in the early 1970s but has not reached the stage of inversion: In 2003, the voting turnout for Finish men was 72%, compared with 68% for women.
• In some Central and South American countries (Chile, Ecuador, and Puerto Rico), a higher rate of women than men vote in elections.
• In India, the voting gap is still considerable, with men far out-voting women. The trend, however, is towards greater participation by women: the voting gap has been narrowing gradually, from 16% in the 1960s, to 10-11% in the '70s and early '80s, to 8-9% in the late '90s.

One possible explanation for the absence of a gap in voting rates in Western democracies is the minor degree of effort and time required to cast a vote. Likewise, women in these countries participate less than men in the activities that surround elections, such as campaigning, making contacts with public representatives, and joining political organizations.

Party Membership
Men are more prone to join political parties and be active in them, though participation rates vary with the nature of the party. The percentage of women is higher in environmental and leftwing parties, and these are the parties that set representation quotas for women in order to encourage their active participation. Men, on the other hand, constitute the majority on the membership roles of professional unions.

Interest in Politics
A public opinion surveys reveal that a larger percentage of men than women reported being interested in politics (by following events in the news, for example) and talking about political issues with family members and friends.

Active Involvement in Volunteer Organizations and New Social Movements
Logic dictates that the growth and development of civil society would increase the influence of women since women are more closely tied to their communities and have less access to institutional politics because they lack the necessary cultural, structural, and personal prerequisites. However, research that explored women's participation in volunteer organizations and new social movements found that the stereotypical gender divisions characterized civil society as well (see Table 1). Women are more active in organizations related to their traditional areas of interest - education, art, religion, welfare, and women's issues. Unexpectedly, women are not more active than men in new social movements concerned with environmental protection and quality of life (though participation rates by gender are quite similar), and men are also the more active members of peace movements (for which there is a 16% gender gap in membership).

Table 1: "Women's" and "Men's" Organizations in Civil Society