Exploring the link between gendered cultures and gendered voting

A large body of literature has explored the gender gap in populist radical right (PRR) party support. Notably, studies indicate that there is no significant gender difference in policy preferences on central PRR issues such as immigration, suggesting that policy alignment alone cannot explain gendered voting patterns (Harteveld, Van der Brug, Dahlberg and Kokkonen, 2015; Rippeyoung 2007). In contrast, investigating the gender gap in Norway, Sweden, and UK, Harteveld and Ivarsflaten (2018) highlight women’s higher motivation to control prejudice, while Harteveld, Dahlberg, Kokkonen and Van der Brug (2019) – in a comparative study of twenty-eight countries – provide strong support for women being more sensitive to social cues and more concerned with social harmony. These insights point to a potential connection between the gender gap in PRR party support and gender-related dimensions of political culture. Building on these insights, this paper argues that both gender norms and broader gendered cultural structures significantly shape political behaviour. Drawing on Almond and Verba’s (1963) fundamental perspectives on political culture and Hofstede’s (1989) conceptualization of the masculine-feminine dimension of culture, it posits that political cultures have a gendered essence – masculine or feminine – which shapes citizens’ political behaviour. Following Hofstede, feminine political cultures are centred on values of modesty, egalitarianism, and progressive gender roles, whereas masculine political cultures emphasize assertiveness, competitiveness, and traditional gender roles. This paper hypothesizes that the gender gap in PRR voting is larger in feminine political cultures, where PRR parties are more likely to face stigma due to their opposition to feminine values such as egalitarianism and progressive gender roles. In these contexts, women’s greater concern for prejudice, social cues, and harmony makes them less likely than men to vote for PRR parties. Conversely, in masculine cultures, where PRR parties align more closely with dominant values of assertiveness and traditional gender roles, the stigma is less pronounced, hence leading to a smaller or negligible gender gap. To test these hypotheses, the study uses four waves of data from the European Social Survey (2016 - 2023) to develop an original measure of (gendered) political culture and applying a Multilevel Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) with latent variables. By proposing that political cultures carry a gendered component – feminine or masculine – this study offers a novel framework for understanding the interplay of political culture and gendered political behaviour. In doing so, this paper not only contributes with a new perspective for understanding the gender gap in PRR party voting, but also with a proposition to how political culture as concept can be developed and measured, with the aim to shed light on why (political) behaviour of women and men are drifting apart, but also to capture the current general polarisation in political behaviour.