Intergenerational Differences in the Gender Gap in Political Engagement Across Modes of Participation

While the gender gap in political participation has vaned or even reversed for certain forms of participation, for other forms it remains persistent. Research has long inquired into the reasons for the persistence of this gap. One of the main reasons found is the lower level of political efficacy, especially internal efficacy, amongst women, as well as in the difference between men and women in other political attitudes whore origin has to be searched in the legacy of the patriarchal society. Research has also looked into how the gender gap may vary across generations. In this paper we aim to deepen our understanding of these patterns by investigating intergenerational differences in the gender gap in political engagement across different modes of participation. In other words, we examine how the reasons for the gender gap in political engagement vary not only across different modes of participation but also across different generations. We explore the hypothesis that gender gap in the participation of different generations is due to different factors. For example, for older generations it would be mostly linked to differences in certain political attitudes such as political efficacy or trust, while for the younger generation this would be due to differences in political values. We then examine to what extent this applies to different modes of participation. Our analyses will be conducted on existing cross-national and cross-sectional data such as the ESS, the EVS, or the WVS. Age-period-cohort analysis will be applied to grasp different kinds of time-related effects.