Different Colors of the Same Rainbow? Gender Issues, their Interplay with political Issues and their Electoral Relevance

Gender-related issues in West Europe have become increasingly politicized and politically contested with (center-)left parties advocating to promote gender equality and the liberalization of LGBTIQ* rights, while right-wing populist and radical right parties express opposition to feminist views. Recent research mitigates this diametrical view by indicating a nuanced shift by right-wing populist and radical right parties towards a more moderate stance on gender-related issues and that their view on gender equality and sexual diversity depends on context and time. As a result, there is a significant variation and divergence among right-wing populist and radical right stances on gender equality, gay rights and sexual diversity. What remains unclear is how these stances are echoed by the public opinion and the electorate? Do egalitarian or traditional positions align on different gender-related issues or is there a need to conceptually separate different dimensions? How do these attitudes about gender relate to the GAL-TAN dimension? Moreover, what role do gender-related issues play in voting behaviour? To address these questions empirically, we analyze data from the 2021/22 German Social Cohesion Panel (SCP), one of the few datasets that provides a comprehensive set of gender-related issues, including sexual diversity. We examine the variance in voters’ attitudes towards different gender-related issues on women’s quota, gender pay gap, gender-neutral language, same-sex adoption and sexual identity and how they align with each other and the GAL-TAN dimension. Finally, we explore the importance of gender-related issues in voting behavior.