How Women Become Political Actors: Female Candidates in Finnish Elections

Finnish women attained universal suffrage as the first in Europe, together with the majority of men, in 1906. Since 1906 the number of women in the national parliament has increased from about 10 percent to more than one-quarter. Earlier, women were more successful in the socialist parties, but nowadays this left-right difference has diminished. Women candidates obtain least votes in the rural parties and in the least developed areas where pressure toward uniformity is high. The earlier east-west difference has almost disappeared. Voting for female candidates is more common among women than among men. Education, employment, working in a white-collar job, high family income, and urban residence increase the probability among women to vote for a female candidate. Among men, those in the highest and lowest social status groups are more favourable towards women candidates than those in between. Middle class men seem to be most afraid of losing status if more women become political actors.     

Change and continuity in the ideological gender gap a longitudinal analysis of left-right self-placement in OECD countries

When asked to place themselves on a left-right scale, men and women tend to take different positions. Over time, however ideological gender differences have taken a different form. While women were traditionally more right-leaning than men, from around the mid-1990s onwards they have been found to take positions to the left of men. Using an originally constructed dataset that includes information on the left-right self-placement of more than 2.5 million respondents in 36 OECD countries between 1973 and 2018, I empirically verify how the ideological gender gap has evolved since. The results show, first, that while women have shifted to the left since the late 1970s, the pace of this change has strongly diminished since the late 1990s. Second, there is important between-country variation in the size of the reversal in the ideological gender gap. Third, with the exception of the Silent generation and the Baby-boomers, newer generations of women have not taken more left-leaning positions than generations before them.     

Is gender on the 'new agenda'?

Abstract. This paper examines the politicization of gender inequality through a cross-national analysis of attitudes towards inequality between men and women. The data were obtained from national surveys in the United States, Britain, West Germany, Australia and Italy. In all of these countries, attitudes towards gender inequality were found to be associated with the 'left-right' cleavage over economic inequality and redistribution, but they were unrelated to 'new politics' issues. It was also found that attitudes towards gender inequality were more closely integrated into the left-right cleavage in those countries where there was greater awareness of gender issues, and that they had very little net impact on partisanship. Thus high levels of awareness of gender inequality are not associated with the emergence of a new cross-cutting political cleavage. It is concluded that inequality of opportunity between men and women does not constitute part of a new politics agenda, nor does it cross-cut other sources of political interests. It is more plausibly seen as a new element of the well-established left-right cleavage. Consequently, it leaves the structure of political divisions relatively intact.     

Gender-Related Political Knowledge and the Descriptive Representation of Women

Past scholarship has documented that women tend to know less about politics than men. This study finds that political knowledge of one kind—knowledge about the actual level of women's representation—is related to support for having more women in office. Individuals who underestimate the percentage of women in office are more likely than individuals who know the correct percentage to support increasing women's representation. Meanwhile, individuals who overestimate the percentage of women in office are less likely to support increasing women's representation. Ironically, women are more likely than men to overestimate the presence of women in office. I also find that gender predicts support for having more women in office, with women more supportive than men. Women would be even more supportive of electing more women to office if they were as knowledgeable as men about the extent of women's underrepresentation.     

Job Satisfaction and Gender in the APS: Who’d Want to be a Male?

This article uses the 2008 State of the Service survey data to compare the job satisfaction and attitudes toward work of men and women in the Australian Public Service (APS). It shows that up to and including Executive Level (EL) women are significantly more positive than men about their work and the organisation. At Senior Executive Service (SES) level men are more satisfied. The article also looks at the predictors of job satisfaction separately for men and women at each level, and finds that career progression, support for work‐life balance, agency leadership, role clarity and authority and good immediate management are significant contributors for most employees. It suggests that the APS use these findings to identify those areas which need to be developed in order to attract men, and increase the job satisfaction of existing male staff at Executive Level and below.     

The changing politics of women: gender and political alignment in 11 nations

Abstract. Although there has been considerable research on the changing politics of women in advanced industrial societies, there has been little consistent, cross-national research to identify the sources of these changes. This paper uses closely comparable data collected in 11 countries in the early 1980s to examine gender differences in political alignments. The results show that in 10 of the 11 countries, women are more conservative than men, by differing degrees. The exception is Australia, where women are more leftwing than men. The sources of these gender differences are shown to be differential levels of workforce participation and religiosity between men and women. Once these and other factors are taken into account through multivariate analysis, women follow the Australian pattern and emerge as more leftwing than men in six of the 10 countries. In the remaining four countries, greater female conservatism is substantially reduced once these factors are taken into account. Various explanations to account for these patterns are discussed.     

The gender gap in populist radical-right voting: examining the demand side in Western and Eastern Europe

ABSTRACT

In most countries, men are more likely to vote for parties of the populist radical right (PRR) than women. The authors argue here that there are two mechanisms that might potentially explain this gender gap: mediation (women's attitudes and characteristics differ from men's in ways that explain the PRR vote) and moderation (women vote for different reasons than men). They apply these two mechanisms to general theories of support for PRR parties—the socio-structural model, the discontent model, and the policy vote model—and test these on a large sample of voters in seventeen Western and Eastern European countries. The study shows that the gender gap is produced by a combination of moderation and mediation. Socio-structural differences between men and women exist, but the extent to which they explain the gender gap is limited, and primarily restricted to post-Communist countries. Furthermore, women generally do not differ from men in their level of nativism, authoritarianism or discontent with democracy. Among women, however, these attitudes are less strongly related to a radical-right vote. This suggests that men consider the issues of the radical right to be more salient, but also that these parties deter women for reasons other than the content of their political programme. While the existing research has focused almost exclusively on mediation, we show that moderation and mediation contribute almost equally to the gender gap.     

One of the Boys? Gender Similarities and Differences in Human Capital among Senior Civil Servants in Denmark

Studies have shown how women are underrepresented in senior executive positions in public and private organizations. Equal representation matters both for reasons of performance and legitimacy, and, to understand the mechanisms behind the glass ceiling, we explore if the women making it to the top of the Danish civil service differ from the men who do so. We want to understand if senior executive positions require something different of women than men. Using a dataset consisting of the entire career trajectory of all senior civil servants in Denmark, we find that, on numerous human capital dimensions, the women and men making it to the top are quite similar, for example, in terms of tenure and educational level. However, we find on the one hand that men are more often employed in the most prestigious departments and, at the same time, it seems that men with a profile deviating from the norm are more likely to make it to the top than women. This may indicate that the most prestigious positions – also in terms of early-career positions – are less accessible to women, and that women are less willing to apply for jobs outside their usual domain, or that those responsible for recruitment are less willing to take a chance on a woman with a slightly unorthodox profile. Hence, our study indicates that greater interest should be paid to the dynamics keeping women at lower levels of the hierarchy and possibly to encourage them to apply for top positions.     

Mapping the Nordic Party Space

The left-right positions of the political parties in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, and Iceland are compared from the late 1970s to the beginning of the 1990s. To locate the parties, survey data on the voters' self-placements along the left-right continuum are used. In order to study changes in the left-right polarity and the degree of consensus along the left-right continuum in each of the countries, we use the mean party positions to calculate three different measures of party distances. The wing party distance is that between the party farthest to the left and the party farthest to the right. The rival party distance is that between the Social Democratic Party and the traditional Conservative Party. Finally, the mean party distance is the average distance between all pairs of parties. One of the main conclusions is that in Sweden and Iceland the left-right continuum seems to contract, whereas in Norway and Denmark the left-right polarity and the distances between the parties are increasing. In today's Nordic party space, the distance between left and right is longest in Denmark and shortest in Norway. Eventually, 39 Nordic parties are brought together on the same left-right scale. The analysis reveals that there are some clearly distinguishable clusters of parties or party families in the Nordic countries, such as, for example, the socialist parties, the social democratic parties and the conservative parties. Other party groups differ greatly in left-right position, like the progressive parties, the liberal parties and the centre parties.     

Intra-party heterogeneity and voter perceptions of party positions

Do voters correctly perceive left-right positions of political parties? This question received considerable attention in the literature in the past decades. Previous research has shown that most voters have somewhat ‘correct’ perceptions of where parties are located on a left-right dimension, but that both individual and party level factors influence how much those perceptions deviate from the real positions. This paper adds to this literature, relaxing the unitary actor assumption and introducing heterogeneity to the analysis. Using data from elite surveys to measure intraparty preference heterogeneity on two dimensions, I demonstrate that voters' misperceptions of party positions strongly increase the more heterogeneous the positions of party elites are on the economic dimension, but not on the sociocultural dimension, and that the effect size depends on how salient this dimension is for the party. The findings have implications for future research on mass-elite linkages, representation, as well as voting behavior.     

The intersection of gender politics and religious beliefs

Traditional understanding has placed conservatism at the intersection of religion and politics and has assumed that this relationship is stronger for women than it is for men. Yet rarely has gender been a principal analytic category in such explorations, and the relationships have not been thoroughly documented. We analyze the 1980 and 1984 National Election Study data and find that religion is not a more conservatizing influence on voting behavior for women than it is for men. Reagan did best with the small group of women fundamentalist believers, and did rather well among highly religious Catholic women. In most other cases the gender gap actually widened with increasing religiosity. Although women are more religious than men, political observers are cautioned that this finding cannot be taken as evidence of women's greater support for conservative candidates.     

The Gender Gap in Norwegian Voting Behaviour*

In the period 1957-81 women in Norway voted less frequently for the socialist parties than did men. In most recent years this pattern has changed so that women are now more likely than men to support the socialist bloc. This shift has been especially strong among the younger and the more educated women. In the younger age group the polarization by gender is also very striking; women have moved to the left and men to the right. While changing demographic patterns partially explain the gender gap in voting behaviour, differences in values must also be taken into account. The most consistent finding is that stronger religious feelings among women make them more likely to vote for the Christian People's party. Values that suggest a greater emphasis on human interactions, less emphasis on material goods, and a concern with peace, increase female support for the socialist parties.     

The predictive power of the left-right self-placement scale for the policy positions of voters and parties

The left-right self-placement scale is often used in political science as a proxy for the policy positions of voters and parties. Yet studies have suggested that, for voters, this relation is dependent on education level. These studies were, however, hampered by data limitations and restricted statistical analyses. In addition, the extent to which the relation between the left-right self-placement scale and policy positions differs for parties and voters has not been explored. This article looks at the differential relation between left-right self-placement and policy positions for voters with different education levels on an integrated dataset containing over 50 voter and party policy positions. It is found that the left-right self-placement scale is a much better predictor for the policy positions of parties than it is for the policy preferences of voters. Robustness checks show that neither the saliency of the policy positions nor their complexity moderates these findings.     

Socialised to think in terms of left and right? The acceptability of the left and the right among European voters

The left-right dimension plays a crucial role in how political scientists think about politics. Yet we know surprisingly little about the extent to which citizens are able to position themselves on a left-right dimension. By analysing non-response on left-right self-identification question from seven waves of the European Social Survey (N = 295,713), this study demonstrates that citizens’ ability to position themselves on the left-right dimension depends on the political system they live in and its history. Citizens in countries with lower levels of elite polarization place themselves on a left-right dimension less often, this difference is partiularly pronounced for citizens with high levels of political interest. Citizens in countries with a recent authoritarian history were unable to place themselves on the left-right dimension more often. These findings show the importance of political socialization for left-right self-identification.     

Left-right perceptions,partisan preferences,electoral participation,and partisan choice in France

An analysis based on survey data shows that electoral participation at the second ballot in France can be accounted for by partisan preferences but not by left-right perceptions of party locations. This finding runs counter to the work of Rosenthal and Sen (1973), who validated a spatial model of participation at the second ballot employing left-right perceptions and partisan preferences interchangeably. Because they use aggregate data, Rosenthal and Sen (1973) are restricted in two ways that, operating interactively, lead them to an unwarranted conclusion concerning the power of left-right perceptions. Later work by Rosenthal and Sen (1977) indicating that left-right perceptions can account for shifts in partisan choice between the two ballots by voters who have decided to participate is confirmed, but partisan preferences account even better for second-ballot choices. Left-right perceptions and partisan sympathies are related, but discrete partisan attitudes are a more powerful factor than left-right perceptions in French second-ballot electoral behavior.     

Run,Jane, Run! Gendered Responses to Political Party Recruitment

Many researchers point to gender inequities in party recruitment practices to explain women’s underrepresentation on the ballot. However, there has been little systematic research about how men and women respond to recruitment, so we do not know whether gender-balanced recruitment would actually lead to gender-balanced outcomes. We conduct two studies to address this question. First, in cooperation with a county Republican Party, we identically recruited 5510 male and 5506 female highly active party members to attend a free candidate training seminar. Republican women were half as likely to respond to the invitation as men. Second, we conducted a survey experiment of 3960 voters on the Utah Colleges Exit Poll. Republican men’s level of self-reported political ambition was increased by the prospect of elite recruitment significantly more than Republican women’s, thereby increasing the gender gap vis-à-vis the control. The gender gap in the effect of recruitment on political ambition among Democrats was much smaller. Together, these findings suggest that to fully understand the role recruitment plays in women’s underrepresentation, researchers must understand the ways in which men and women respond to recruitment, not just whether political elites engage in gendered recruitment practices.     

Present but Not Accounted For? Gender Differences in Civic Resource Acquisition

We investigate the sources of an important form of social inequality: the social processes by which men and women acquire participatory resources in organizations. In particular, we investigate the extent to which men and women acquire civic skills and are targets for political recruitment within churches. Integrating theory about social interaction within an organizational structure, we hypothesize that the ways in which women gain politically relevant resources from the church are simply different from those of men. Three factors explain the institutional treatment of women in churches: (1) women's political contributions are devalued; (2) women respond to social cues more than men do; (3) women respond to political cues from clergy—especially female clergy—whereas men do not. Our findings of gender differences in civic resource acquisition provide a more nuanced treatment of the mobilization process and have broad implications for the relationship between political difference and participatory democracy .     

When Are Women More Effective Lawmakers Than Men?

Previous scholarship has demonstrated that female lawmakers differ from their male counterparts by engaging more fully in consensus‐building activities. We argue that this behavioral difference does not serve women equally well in all institutional settings. Contentious and partisan activities of male lawmakers may help them outperform women when in a polarized majority party. However, in the minority party, while men may choose to obstruct and delay, women continue to strive to build coalitions and bring about new policies. We find strong evidence that minority party women in the U.S. House of Representatives are better able to keep their sponsored bills alive through later stages of the legislative process than are minority party men, across the 93^rd–110^th Congresses (1973–2008). The opposite is true for majority party women, however, who counterbalance this lack of later success by introducing more legislation. Moreover, while the legislative style of minority party women has served them well consistently across the past four decades, majority party women have become less effective as Congress has become more polarized.     

Gendered Perceptions and Political Candidacies: A Central Barrier to Women's Equality in Electoral Politics

Based on the second wave of the Citizen Political Ambition Panel Study, we provide the first thorough analysis of how gender affects women and men's efficacy to run for office. Our findings reveal that, despite comparable credentials, backgrounds, and experiences, accomplished women are substantially less likely than similarly situated men to perceive themselves as qualified to seek office. Importantly, women and men rely on the same factors when evaluating themselves as candidates, but women are less likely than men to believe they meet these criteria. Not only are women more likely than men to doubt that they have skills and traits necessary for electoral politics, but they are also more likely to doubt their abilities to engage in campaign mechanics. These findings are critical because the perceptual differences we uncover account for much of the gender gap in potential candidates’ self‐efficacy and ultimately hinder women's prospects for political equality.     

Sacrificial lambs,women candidates,and district competitiveness in Canada

Women's continued political underrepresentation suggests that women candidates might be more likely than men to be ‘sacrificial lambs’ – that is, more likely than men to serve as party standard bearers in districts where their party has little chance to win. Using data from the 2004–2011 Canadian federal elections, we find support for the sacrificial lamb hypothesis when district competitiveness is measured dynamically, rather than statically. Our dynamic measurement of district competitiveness further shows that women incumbents' seats are not as safe as are men's. We conclude that these two factors help to explain why women remain underrepresented in Canadian federal politics.