Female political empowerment and the gender gap in unconventional political participation

Research on political participation has recently strongly focused on gender differences. Although most studies argue that the gender gap closes over time, it has been impervious to explanation. This study seeks to fill this gap by investigating the gender gap across time. Drawing on vast empirical evidence, it argues that differences in unconventional political participation between men and women diminish with increasing female political empowerment, conceptualized as a process of increasing equality in human rights (freedom of choice), female participation in civil society (agency), as well as representation. Moreover, it contends that female political empowerment is especially important in young women’s political socialization. To investigate the extent to which female political empowerment mitigates the gender gap in political participation, this study uses an innovative methodological approach. The Integrated Value Studies (IVS) dataset, combining World Value Survey (WVS) and European Values Study (EVS) data merged with data on female political empowerment from Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) allows for the analysis of a period of nearly forty years (1981 to 2020) across more than 100 countries. By applying multilevel modelling, empirical results show that female political empowerment indeed moderates inequalities in political participation. However, when comparing the impact of the level of empowerment at the time of the survey and when respondents were aged 18, this paper shows that political empowerment in women’s early political socialization is much more important. Overall, the study contributes to research on the gender gap of political participation by highlighting the importance of female political empowerment and political socialization, which posits that the impact of political context is greatest during the formative years of adolescents and in early adulthood.