Unequal benefits from shared resources: Examining the gender gap in political self-efficacy within the family context

While the gender gap in political behaviour has been extensively studied, the mechanisms that lead women to perceive politics as a male-dominated sphere, and consequently to show less interest, confidence, and ambition in political participation, remain underexplored. Specifically, the gap in internal political efficacy, persists significantly across European countries, with women consistently feeling less capable of participating in politics than men, even after controlling by socioeconomic individual characteristics. Traditional explanations for the gender gap are built on three pillars: unequal resource distribution, the underrepresentation of women in politics, and psychological factors that alienate women from political realm. This research contributes to the literature by integrating insights from these grand theories and exploring them at the moment the gap starts to emerge: when girls and boys develop their political attitudes. On the one hand, unequal resource benefits theory highlights that, after women gain full access to education and work, the focus shifts to how men and women benefit differently from these resources. On the other hand, psychological perspectives, particularly gendered political socialization, suggest women are socialized to view politics as male-dominated. The goal is to see whether, given the same family structure, measured by the parents' educational level and occupational status, the development of political efficacy differs for boys and girls over the lifecycle. To achieve this, I use panel data with a household structure from the British Household Panel, which covers 10 years of the respondents' lives with objective data from all family members. Preliminary findings reveal that while both boys and girls benefit from higher parental resources, girls experience significantly smaller gains. This disparity persists within the same families, suggesting unequal benefits from shared environments as a critical contributor to the gender gap in political efficacy. By framing these findings within lifecycle and socialization dynamics, this paper tries to shed light on how structural and psychological factors intersect to sustain gendered patterns of political behaviour.