Personality Traits and the Gender Gap in Ideology1

What explains the gender gap in ideology, i.e. the observation that women tend to be more leftist than men? We provide new evidence showing that personality traits play a key role. Using a novel high-quality data set, we show that the mediating (i.e. indirect) e¤ects of gender operating through personality traits by far dominate the direct e¤ects of gender. They also dominate other potential di¤erences between the sexes like income or education as explanatory factors. Our …ndings suggest that women tend to be more leftist than men mainly because they have di¤erent personalities, which, in turn, shape their expressed ideology. Taking such mediating e¤ects of personality traits into account explains over three quarters of the observed gender gap in general ideological preferences.