Different Governments, Different Interests: The Gender Gap in Political Interest

Political interest is an orientation that has shown a persistent gender gap over time (Kittilson and Schwindt-Bayer, 2012). Yet, Coffé (2013) has found using the British data that this gap disappeared when respondents were asked about their interest in local politics. Are women generally less interested in politics or are these differences related to the object of interest? In this paper, I pick up the argument that politics, when used broadly, evokes national and partisan politics at the expense of other forms of participations or political arenas (Coffé, 2013; Stolle and Gidengil, 2010). However, when these other political arenas are specifically asked about, gender differences vary. Interest in national politics reproduces the patterns of the usual general formulation, while differences fade in interest in local politics. I further argue that this differences seem to relate to differences in men and women’s roles in society. While the frame of national politics as a men’s game persists, caring for the family should increase interaction with local politics, thus rendering this arena interesting. I analyse survey data from the Citizenship, Involvement and Democracy Project (Andersen et al, 2007) to test across different countries the extent to which local politics are more interesting to women than other political arenas, and how this connects with situational explanations of the gender gap. This paper intends to contribute to the discussion on the gender gap on political interest by looking at an underresearched area, the relationship between interest and different political arenas. Moreover, a better understanding of the topics that stimulate citizens’ curiosity for politics can contribute to tackling this source of political inequality.