Private Women and Economic Men? Policy Priorities of the Czech Women and Men and its Consequences

The paper focuses on gender differences in policy preferences of public opinion in the Czech Republic. According to the classic study by Inglehart & Norris (2000), women in the 1960s to 1980s were more conservative than men. However, since 1980s, women's political opinions in advanced industrial societies shifted more to the left. This paper aims to answer the question: what policies prioritize Czech women and men? And what are the differences in policy preferences of the Czech women and men? Building on Phillipsʼ (1998) theory of presence, while using data available from the Czech Public Opinion Research Centre (CVVM), able to statistically represent the Czech population, I determine, what policies Czech men and women ascribe as important when talking about topics of social importance between January 2017 to March 2020. Despite the fact that women are not uniformed entity with the same political interests, we are still able to find political group characteristics and perceived responsibility driven by the shared interest to increase autonomy (Phillips 1998). Quantitative analysis of the data available from the Czech Public Opinion Research Centre showed that the Czech women prioritized policies concerned with the issues of family, education, and health over other policies between the years 2017-2020. While the Czech men prioritized rather economic policies concerned with the issues of the European Union, militarism, corruption, economic growth, foreign policy, taxes, transport, and sport between the years 2017-2020. Czech women are more likely than men to assign the issues of social importance to issues of social investments. Interpreting these results in terms of substantive representation of women in the Czech politics means, that in politics where women are underrepresented, also these policies are not given the attention and dedication they should have in the eyes of the female part of the population. Inglehart, R., & Norris, P. (2000). The Developmental Theory of the Gender Gap: Women's and Men's Voting Behavior in Global Perspective. Phillips, A. (1998). The politics of presence: the political representation of gender, ethnicity, and race. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI:10.1093/0198294158.001.0001