It is a repeated finding in political representation and gender research that men are more likely to be engaged in politics than women. This conclusion however does not make the topic less worthwhile but a rather crucial study object. Particularly in times of political discontent, outward political apathy and persistent male bias, politics is in need for detailed knowledge about participation preferences disaggregated by gender and age groups.
My research project contributes to the academic debate in that it approaches the gender gap in political participation from the youth perspective. Based on a current record of responses from a representative youth survey conducted in cooperation between the Friedrich-Ebert-Foundation (FES), the German Youth Institute (DJI) and infas (Institute for Applied Social Sciences), in Germany in 2015, this paper discovers the (diverging) distribution of participation preferences well before young people enter adulthood. Cross sectional records of 2070 individuals aged between 14 and 29 years offer major research opportunities to examine when and why the gender gap in participation emerges.
Focusing on the youngest potentially active citizens is promising because participation preferences are candidly being tested and formed. Young people have not yet settled in adult life with the burden to manage profession, family and leisure time in parallel, which should have influence on the gender gap. With the possibility to trace and compare the development of tendencies towards participation among different age groups, we can assess whether there is a threshold at which young people are increasingly likely to engage and whether this threshold differs for girls and boys.
Unlike previous analyses, the FES/DJI survey implements a rather inclusive conceptualization of political participation and thereby permits detailed distinctions between certain kinds of political activity. Intending to map young people’s political behavior as precisely as possible respondents were able to indicate their attitudes and previous engagement on an extended list of 23 items. By means of principal component analysis, these ways are reduced to three types of participation, which in turn serve as dependent variables for the multivariate analysis. Regression analyses reveal the most important factors influencing the gender gap and differences in their explanatory power depending on the type of political activity. The results disclose a persistent gender gap predominantly for the institutional type of participation.
Making use of the diversity of political action for the study of gender differences, this paper maps very precisely the current ways of participation among young women and men in Germany and outlines their potential for future engagement. Earlier studies have emphasized that preferences for political involvement developed during younger years do influence political behavior all through adulthood. Thus, careful examination of diverging youth attitudes and participatory preferences presented in this paper provides important hints on how to tackle gender problems within this cohort of near future adults and politicians.
