Is There a Gender Gap in the Sense of Duty to Vote?

Carol Galais and André Blais
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Carol Galais: Departament de Ciència Política i Dret Públic, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Bellaterra, 08193 Barcelona, Spain
André Blais: Département de Science Politique, Université de Montréal, Pavillon Lionel-Groulx local C4040, Montreal, QC H3C 3J7, Canada

Societies, 2019, vol. 9, issue 4, 1-15

Abstract: The topic of gender differences in the propensity to vote has been a central theme in political behavior studies for more than seventy years. When trying to explain why the turnout gender gap has shrunk over the last few decades, some scholars have claimed that this might be due to the fact that women are more dutiful than men; however, no study to date has systematically addressed gender differences regarding the sense of civic duty to vote. The present research focused on such differences and empirically tested the role of political interest and moral predispositions on this gender gap. We explored duty levels in nine different Western countries and, most of the time, we found small but significant gender differences in favor of men. Our estimations suggest that this relationship can be explained mainly by the simple fact that women are less interested in politics than men.

Keywords: duty to vote; gender gap; turnout; political engagement; women (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 A14 P P0 P1 P2 P3 P4 P5 Z1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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