The Transformation of the Electoral Gender Gap: The Role of Generational Replacement

Studies on electoral gender gap have documented a historical transition from women favoring conservative parties towards partisan convergence, side by side with a new “modern” gender gap, whereby women are more leftwing than men. In their developmental theory Inglehart and Norris (2000, 2003) emphasized the role of structural factors, cultural variables and values in the explanation of those variations – over time and between and within countries. While some aspects of Inglehart and Norris's theory were empirically examined (e.g. Giger 2009), studies have failed to give systematic attention to cohort effects (differences between generations) or to the contribution of cohort replacement to aggregate change in the electoral gender gap. The present research addresses that lacuna by an over-time and cross-country comparison. First, it empirically tests for generational effects on the electoral gender gap. Second, the paper develops the theoretical mechanisms which account for generational effects on the electoral gender gap. More specifically, it distinguishes between compositional effects, which derive from the demographic composition of the members of each generation at current time, and contextual effects, which derive from early conditions and circumstances in which each generation came of age. Third, the study examines these explanatory variables at the generational level in addition to variables at the individual level in order to explain cross-generational variation.