This paper investigates whether gender dynamics shape the intergenerational transmission of class voting. While most research on class voting transmission emphasizes material conditions during upbringing - typically proxied through paternal occupation - we argue that this approach overlooks key gendered dynamics in how political preferences develop. We suggest two theoretical channels of class voting transmission. First, as prior literature has demonstrated, there is a material mechanism: growing up in a working-class household shapes political preferences (Ares and Van Ditmars 2022). Our contribution lies in examining a second, previously unexplored channel: that of gendered identification, drawing on recent work in gendered political socialization (Bos et al., 2021; Van Ditmars, 2023). Beyond shared material conditions, daughters may politically identify more strongly with their mother’s class position, and sons with their father’s, reflecting gendered processes of political identity formation within families. Using pooled European Social Survey data (2002–2010), we analyze associations between parental class (both mother’s and father’s) and the respondent’s likelihood of voting for social democratic parties. We ask whether same-gender parent-child class linkages are stronger than cross-gender ones, and whether having just one working-class parent is sufficient to sustain class voting. We also account for the role of intergenerational mobility and educational attainment as potential moderating factors. This preliminary study contributes to ongoing debates about the evolution of class politics by integrating gendered mechanisms while expanding the applications of gendered political socialization theory.
