The Transformation of the Radical Right Gender Gap: The Case of the 2014 European Elections

In 2004, the term « Radical Right Gender Gap » was coined to capture the greater reluctance of women to vote for these parties in Europe (Givens, 2004). Several lines of explanation were put forward (women were more educated, less exposed by the types of jobs they held to competition with immigrants, less supportive of political violence and extremism, more religious, etc.). But systematic analysis of survey data shows that there are large variations in the gap from one country to another (Immerzeel, Coffé and van der Lippe, 2013; Mayer, 2012). In addition, even where this gap existed, things might be changing (Barisione and Mayer, 2013), Radical Right Parties presenting themselves as women friendly and targeting Islam and Muslims in the name of democratic values and women’s rights (Tjitske and Haggelund, 2007). Using the 2014 European Election Studies dataset, this paper intends to revisit the RRGG in a comparative perspective. Drawing from the 2014 European Parliament elections, we analyze gender as a predictor of vote choice for Radical Right Parties. While the main effect of gender should generally be -- once controlled for education, age, religion, and occupation -- very weak or null, we expect interactions of gender and left-right ideology to significantly affect electoral support for RR parties across Europe.