The Developmental Theory of the Gender Gap: Women's and Men's Voting Behavior in Global Perspective

Studies carried out in many countries in previous decades found that women were more conservative than men and less likely to participate in politics. Here, it is examined whether this traditional gender gap persists today, or whether gender cleavages in the electorate have converged, and whether the phenomenon of the modern gender gap, with women more left wing, has become evident elsewhere. The article draws on evidence from the World Values Surveys in the early 1980s, and the early and mid-1990s carried out in over sixty countries around the world. This study establishes that gender differences in electoral behavior have been realigning, with women moving toward the left of men throughout advanced industrial societies (though not in postcommunist societies or developing countries) and explores the reasons for this development, including the role of structural and cultural factors. The conclusion considers the political implications of the findings. Kqr words: Electoral behavior Feminism Gender gap World Values Surveys During the postwar era the established orthodoxy in political science was that women in western democracies proved more right wing than men. Gender differences in party preferences were never as marked as the classic electoral cleavages of class, region, and religion-for example, there were no popular "women's parties" as there were parties closely associated with labor unions, provincial regions or churches, but nevertheless "women's conservatism" was commonly noted as a persistent and well-established phenomenon. During the 1980s the conventional wisdom of women's conservatism came under increasing challenge. On the one hand, commentators in many countries outside the United States detected a process of gender d e a l i p m e n t , finding minimal sex differences in 0192-5121 (2000/10) 21:4, 441-463; 014844 O 2000 International Political Science Association SAGEPublications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi) 442 International Political Science h i m 21(4 ) voting choice and party preferences. On the other hand, in the United States a pattern of gender realignment became evident. The emergence of the modern gender gap in America is due to the way that women moved towards the Democrats since 1980 while men moved towards the Republicans on a stable, longterm, and consistent basis, thereby reversing the pattern of voting and partisanship common in the 1950s. The process of gender realignment in the United States raises the question whether similar developments are now evident elsewhere. There are two perspectives on this issue. If the gender gap in American politics is caused by common structural and/or cultural trends affecting modern societies, such as increased female participation in the paid workforce, the break-up of traditional family units, or the transformation of sex roles, then we would expect to find similar gender gaps in other nations. Yet, alternatively, if caused by specific factors which are distinctive to American politics, such as the traditional lack of a strong class cleavage in the electorate, the centrist pattern of two party competition, or the salience of issues like abortion and affirmative action, then we would expect that the modern gender gap in the United States would prove to be sui generis, or at least highly contingent upon particular conditions found in particular countries, such as the predominant issue agenda, patterns of party competition, or cultural values. Exploring this issue is important to compare, understand, and map the pattern worldwide and also to provide further theoretical insights into the reasons for the emergence of the modern gender gap in the United States. Unfortunately the previous comparative literature has been unable to resolve this issue, with different studies producing somewhat contradictory and ambiguous findings. To provide a fresh look at this issue we focus on comparing gender differences in the voting preferences of the electorate, the most common meaning of the term "gender gap," in a wide range of countries. We recognize that the term "gender gap" concerns a multidimensional political phenomenon that can refer to any political differences between women and men, such as in their voting behavior, partisanship, attitudes and opinions, or civic engagement, at mass or elite levels, but the concern of this article is restricted to comparing voting choices. Our argument is based on a developmental theory of the gender gap suggesting that long-term structural and cultural trends, which have transformed women's and men's lives, have gradually produced realignment in gender politics in postindustrial societies. For data we draw on the World Values Surveys (wvs), carried out in three waves in the early 1980s, the early 1990s, and the mid-1990s. In total these surveys allow us to compare sixty societies around the globe, although not all countries were included in each wave. The wvs includes many different postindustrial, postcommunist, and developing societies. Gender differences in voting intentions are compared using a 10-point scale, derived from expert assessments of the position of parties across the left-right spectrum. The analysis demonstrates that gender differences in voting behavior have been realigning in postindustrial societies. By the 1990s women voters in these nations proved significantly more leftwing than men, even after introducing a range of social controls. The modern gender gap is not confined to the United States, as particularistic accounts suggest, but is also evident by the 1990s in some West European states. Nevertheless this pattern was not yet evident in postcommunist societies or developing societies, where the traditional gender gap persists into the mid-1990s with women voters more rightwing than men. The main reason for the 443 INGLEHART/NORRIS: Developmental Theory ofthe Gender Gap emergence of the modern gender gap in postindustrial societies, we argue, is that structural and cultural trends have transformed the values of women and men, particularly among the younger generations. The conclusion summarizes the main findings and considers the implications for understanding women's and men's power at the ballot box and the process of cultural change. Theoretical Framework The Orthodox Account of Female Consmatism Research on gender differences in the electorate has been a recurrent theme in political science ever since the earliest systematic surveys of voting behavior (Tingsten, 1937: 37-65). Many hoped, and others feared, that once women were enfranchised there would be a distinctive "women's vote." The early classics in the 1950s and 1960s established the orthodoxy in political science; gender differences in voting tended to be fairly modest but nevertheless women were found to be more apt than men to support center-right parties in Western Europe and in the United States, a pattern which we can term the traditional gender gap (Duverger, 1955: 65-66; Lipset, 1960: 143; Pulzer, 1967: 52; Butler and Stokes, 1974: 160; Campbell et al., 1960: 493). Inglehart (1977: 229) confirmed that in the early 1970s women remained more likely to support Christian Democrat and Conservative parties in Western Europe, particularly in Italy and Germany (see Table I ) , although a new pattern appeared to be emerging in the United States. TABLE1. Gender Gap in the Early 1970s. Society Men Women Gap Italy 44 30 Germany 60 47 Britain 50 41 Belgium 40 36 France 54 49 Netherlands 47 45 USA 32 37 -14 -13 -9 -6 -5 -2 t5 Note: Percentage supporting parties of the left. Source: Inglehart, The Silent Reuolution, 1977:228. Most explanations of the traditional gender gap emphasized structural sex differences in religiosity, longevity, and labor force participation; for example, women in Italy and France were more likely to attend churches associated with Christian Democratic parties (Lipset, 1960: 260; Blondel, 1970: 55-56). By implication, in this era women were also commonly assumed to be more conservative in their political attitudes and values, producing an ideological gap underpinning their party preferences (for a critical summary of the literature, however, see Goot and Reid, 1984). The conventional wisdom was summarized in The Civic Culture, first published in 1963: "Wherever the consequences of women's suffrage have been studied, it would appear that women differ from men in their political behavior only in being somewhat more frequently apathetic, parochial, 444 International Political Science Reuiao 21(4) [and] consen~ative. . . Our data, on the whole, confirm the findings reported in the literature" (Almond and Verba, 1963: 325). Gender was not regarded as a primary electoral cleavage, equivalent to class, region, or religion, because women and men experienced many crosscutting cleavages, but nevertheless the classic account of European social cleavages by Lipset and Rokkan (1967) understood sex differences as one of the factors influencing the electoral base of party politics. Theories of GenderDealzgrzment This orthodoxy came under increasing challenge during the 1980s since scholars in many Western countries emphasized a pattern of gender dealignment in the electorate, or a weakening of women's traditional conservatism. This pattern was noted in voting behavior in Britain (Baxter and Lansing, 1983; Rose and McAllister, 1986, 1990: 51; Heath, Jowell, and Curtice, 1985: 23; Welch and Thomas, 1988; Hayes and McAllister, 1997; Hayes, 1997) as well as in Germany (Rusciano 1992), the Netherlands (Mayer and Smith, 1995), and New Zealand (Vowles, 1993). This literature suggested that the old thesis of female conservatism was apparently no longer evident; instead, the situation in the 1980s seemed contingent upon political circumstances: in some established democracies women seemed to lean towards the right, in others to the left, particularly in Nordic societies (Oskarson, 1995), and in yet others no significant differences could be detected (Mayer and Smith, 1995; Norris, 1988; Oskarson, 1995; Studlar, McAllister and Hayes, 1998). Studies of ideological self-placement, rather than voting choice, found that during the mid-1980s women in Western Europe tended to see themselves as slightly more rightwing than men, although this gap was reduced when controls were incorporated for labor force participation and religiosity (DeVaus and McAllister, 1989). Nevertheless Jelen, Thomas and Wilcox (1994) found that European women tended to be more left-leaning in their political attitudes and issue preferences. hoverall pattern of gender dealignment seemed to fit theories suggesting that the impact of traditional social-party linkages had weakened in many established democracies, notably in terms of class and religion (Dalton et al., 1984; Crewe and Denver, 1985; Franklin et al., 1992; Norris and Evans, 1999). This account stressed that voters have become more instrumental. Under these conditions no party could expect to enjoy a persistent and habitual advantage among women or men voters, instead contingent factors like government performance, party policies, and leadership images could be expected to come to the fore in voting decisions. Theories of Gender Realignment During the last decade, however, there has been much speculation, although little concrete evidence, that women were continuing to realign towards the left throughout advanced industrial societies, a situation that we will term the modern gender gap, replicating the pattern evident since the early 1980s in the United States. The process of "partisan realignment" is understood to produce an enduring and stable change in the mass coalitional basis of party politics (for a fuller discussion see Norris and Evans, 1999). A classic example in the United States is the African-American realignment towards the Democrats in the 1950s and 1960s, while Southern white conservatives shifted towards the WP, leading to a major long-term shift in the basis of American party competition (Black and INGLEHART/NORRIS: Darelopmental Themy ofthe Gender Gap 445 Black, 1987).In the United States the process of gender realignment meant that although women leaned towards the Republican Party in the 1952,1956and 1960 presidential elections, during the 1960s and 1970s traditional gender differences in the electorate faded, and from the 1980s onwards the modern voting gap became apparent in successive presidential, gubernatorial,and state-level contests, as well as in Democratic Party identification (Smeal, 1984; Klein, 1984; Mueller, 1988;Miller and Shanks, 1996;Seltzer, Newman and Leighton, 1997; CAWP, 1998). The modem gender gap in American elections has rarely been substantial compared with differences based on race or religion, but nevertheless this has proved a consistent, stable, and politically significant factor in many contests, representing a long-term shift in the mass basis of party politics (see Figure 1). % Voting Democrat 70 1