Gendered political action – which forms of political participation do you prefer?

Although women have caught up with or even surpassed men in several forms of civic and electoral participation, gender differences persist in how they engage politically. Women tend to favor local, collective, and less confrontational actions, whereas men are more active in institutionalized and highly visible arenas such as party politics and large-scale mobilization. Yet we still know little about which specific features of political actions drive these divergent preferences. Is it the time commitment, the degree of conflict, the organizer’s identity, or the territorial scope that matters most? To address this question, we fielded a pre-registered choice-based conjoint experiment embedded in a nationally representative survey of the Spanish population (July 2023). Respondents evaluated pairs of hypothetical political actions that varied along five dimensions: territorial scope, organizer, level of conflict, degree of collectivity, and time required. This design allows us to isolate the causal impact of each attribute on men’s and women’s preferences. Our findings show that women display a stronger preference than men for actions that are local, less time-demanding, and collectively organized, while men show higher support for institutional and party-led initiatives. Gender gaps are not uniform across all attributes but are particularly pronounced regarding time and proximity. Moreover, differences widen among adults and parents, consistent with the influence of caregiving roles and life-stage constraints. These results underscore the importance of considering both the design of participatory opportunities and the social context in which gendered political engagement unfolds.