15:00 - 16:40
P4
Room: South Hall 2B
Panel Session 4
Cyrill Otteni - Female political empowerment and the gender gap in political participation
Martin Haselmayer - Equality Of What? Mapping Changes In The Equality Concepts Of Parties In OCED Countries Since 1970
Andy Harris - A Booth of One's Own: Gender and Turnout in Pakistan
Didac Queralt - Historical origins of gender gaps in political representation: And how cultural entrepreneurs can help close it
Katharina Pfaff - Gender and Political Protest: Understanding Mass Mobilization for Gender Equality
Female political empowerment and the gender gap in political participation
P4-01
Presented by: Cyrill Otteni
Cyrill Otteni
Technical University Dresden
Research on political participation has strongly focused on gender differences. Although most studies argue that the gender gap closes, it has been impervious to explanation. This study seeks to fill this gap by investigating the gender gap across time. Drawing on vast empirical evidence, it argues that differences in political participation between men and women diminish with increasing female political empowerment, conceptualized as a process of increasing equality in human rights (freedom of choice), female participation in civil society (agency), as well as representation. Moreover, it contends that female political empowerment is especially important in young women’s political socialization.
To investigate the extent to which female political empowerment mitigates the gender gap in political participation, this study uses an innovative methodological approach. The combined World Value Survey and European Values Study data merged with data on female political empowerment from Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) allows for the analysis of a period of nearly forty years across about 100 countries. By applying multilevel modelling, results show that female empowerment moderates inequalities in political participation. However, comparing the impact of the level of empowerment at the time of the survey and when respondents were aged 18, this paper shows that political empowerment in women’s early political socialization is much more important.
Overall, the study contributes to research on the gender gap of political participation by highlighting the importance of female political empowerment and political socialization, which posits that the impact of political context is greatest during the formative years in early adulthood.