The Effect of Changes in Marital Status on Women's Political Engagement: Evidence from a Swiss Household Panel Study

It has been argued that what happens in the private life has consequences for public life. With regards to women’s political participation, scholars posit that the transition of marital status, an important life-cycle event, influences women’s level of political participation. However, there is controversy in the theoretical expectation as well as empirical findings about whether marriage increases or depresses participation. When women go from being married to single, they typically experience in increase in their ability to make decisions about their financial resources, however, their household responsibilities (e.g., child rearing) may become even more tasking. Changes in these two resources result in conflicting expectations about how divorce should impact women's participation in the polity. In this study we examine the effect of material, psychological, and societal changes in women’s personal life on various aspects of involvement in civil society. Drawing on eleven waves of Swiss Household panel data we implement a unique research design that takes advantage of the ability to track changes in individuals’ marital status over time. This allows us to isolate the changes that take place in women’s lives when they change their marital status from married to divorced, and provides us with intuition about how divorce impacts participation. We examine how changes in marital status influence women's political involvement to determine what resources matter most for political involvement.