Explaining the Reversed Gender Gap in Political Consumerism: Personality Traits as Significant Mediators

Research on political consumerism documents a persistent reversed gender gap, as women boycott and buycott products more often than men. Previous efforts to explain the reversed gender gap rely on classical theoretical models developed to illuminate gender differences in political participation in general. Accounting for socio‐economic and situational factors as well as socialization leaves a significant amount of the reversed gender gap unexplained, though. Adhering to recent empirical evidence of personality as an important factor influencing political behavior, we argue that gender differences in personality traits could provide an alternative explanation to account for gender disparities in political consumerism. We use original survey data specially designed to measure political consumerism in Switzerland, which also include the Big Five model of personality. We find empirical evidence that gender differences in personality traits, in particular agreeableness, explain a significant portion of the reversed gender gap in political consumerism.     

Women,information ecology,and political protest in the Middle East

Does internet usage increase the likelihood of political protest, and is the effect larger among women than men? Using data from three waves of the Arab Barometer Survey, historical research and interviews with women activists, this paper contributes to the growing body of literature on information ecology and contentious politics in the Middle East. We hypothesized that the internet increases public protest for all individuals but differentially enhances women’s involvement in public protest in the Middle East. We find that there are substantial gender gaps in internet usage and political protest, and that internet usage increases political protest of adults, on average, regardless of gender. However, internet usage does not differentially increase public protest among women (including during the Arab Spring). Our paper problematizes the notion that the internet is a low-cost and safe space for women’s political activism.     

Geschlechtsspezifische Lohnungleichheit in Betrieben, Berufen und Jobzellen (1993–2006)

Whereas educational inequalities between women and men and differences in labor market participation shrinked or even diminished during the last decades, the gender pay gap remained stable over time. This is remarkable because the pay gap has attracted much more attention as the main target of anti-discrimination policies. Using data from the IAB (Institute for Employment Research), we analyze whether the average pay gap between women and men working full-time can be explained by their employment in different industries, occupations, and firms. As the smallest level of analysis we focus on occupations within firms (job cells). This strategy of analysis yields the best possible approximation to the concept of “within-job wage gap”. The results show that women with equivalent training and occupational experience earn wages that are 12 percent less than the wages of men in such job cells. Even though the educational participation of women rose to that of their male counterpart, the gender composition of labor market participation changed and the pressure of equal employment policies grew, the gender wage gap does not decrease within our observation period (1993–2006). In conclusion, we discuss theoretical and methodological reasons for this finding.     

Gender Gaps in Civic and Political Participation in Latin America

This article examines whether there is gender segmentation in civic participation in Latin America, and whether such segmentation is related to gender differences in political participation. Confirming the findings of other studies, this analysis indicates that there is gender segmentation in civic associational activities, and that men are more involved than women in political activities, except for voting. Among those involved in civic activities, however, women attend meetings more often than men or about equally in all types of activities under consideration, except for sports and recreational pursuits. This highlights the need to differentiate between type and intensity of civic participation and provides empirical evidence that Latin American women have strong community ties through a variety of organizations. The regression analysis shows that civic engagement has a positive effect on political participation but that the magnitude of that effect varies by gender depending on the activity.     

Protesting gender discrimination from within: women’s political representation on behalf of Islamic parties

Abstract

In recent decades, Islamic political movements, and their subsequent political parties, have been increasingly recruiting and nominating women to high-level decision-making positions despite the fact that the ideology they espouse often acts to dissuade women from assuming positions of political leadership. My ethnographic research on religious women’s activism in Iran and Turkey helps explain this unexpected trend by shedding light onto the role of Islamic party women in challenging the gender discriminatory attitudes and behaviours of their male party leaders. In particular, I highlight the role that a number of high-ranking Islamic party women with close ties to the ruling elites played in pressuring their male party leaders to address women’s political underrepresentation in formal politics. Women’s close ties to the ruling elites consisted of formal ties with key Islamic leaders that evolved thanks to women’s long-term devotion to the Islamic movement or learning at Islamic seminaries. I demonstrate that such close ties to the leaders, as well as the presence of a public discourse in favour of women’s increased access to politics, enabled influential Islamic women to leverage a form of ‘internal criticism’ as an important strategy to enhance women’s political rights and status from within the Islamic movements.     

Between Maternalism and Feminism: Women in Nicaragua's Counter‐Revolutionary Forces

To date very little scholarship has focused on the experiences of women who fought or collaborated with Nicaragua's counter‐revolutionary forces (known as the Contra) in the 1980s. Based on qualitative research conducted in Waslala, this paper examines the circumstances which led a group of women to become positioned as Contra supporters. It then explores how these women constructed their gender identities in the light of their collaboration with the Contra. It argues that despite their participation in a right‐wing political organisation and despite their tendency to draw upon understandings of themselves as mothers, widows and victims of war, these women should not be seen as inherently conservative and reactionary, given that they have also been inspired by forms of political organisation that are indicative of an emergent feminist identity.     

Women's Organisations and the Politics of Gender in Cuba's Urban Insurrection (1952–1958)

This article sheds new light on Cuba's urban insurrection to oust Fulgencio Batista by focusing on two all‐women's anti‐Batista groups. It charts the origins and developments of the groups, explores their conceptions about the importance of women's political action and examines the impact that participating in the insurrection had on group members. The article complicates long‐standing assumptions about women's low levels of participation in the insurrection and the absence of demands for gender equity among those who did participate by noting that some older women militants had histories with the feminist movement of the 1930s, and that many younger women were forced by the circumstances of the insurrection to confront and challenge contemporary gender norms.     

The ‘New Right' Vote: An Analysis of the Gender Gap in the Vote Choice for the SVP

Studying the Swiss national elections 2003, we find a pronounced gender gap in the SVP vote ‐ women are significantly less likely to vote for this party than are men. In order to explain this gender gap, this article combines two innovative approaches. On the one hand, it links the literature on gender gaps with research on the New Right. On the other, it makes a distinction between the conditional and compositional effects of explanatory factors. Our analysis reveals that conditional effects are of greater relevance than compositional ones. Explanatory factors regularly applied in research on the New Right have a conditional effect inasmuch as they only have an effect on male voters, but cannot explain the behaviour of women. This, in turn, also highlights the importance of a gender‐specific focus for further research.     

A mob for hire? Unpacking older women’s political activism in Kyrgyzstan

This article explores the politics of older women in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan, who have emerged as informal leaders in urban neighbourhoods to ‘speak for the poor’ to the state. Their mediating role is crucial for understanding community micro-politics, women’s political agency and more broadly state–society relations in the post-Soviet context. Drawing on in-depth interviews with older female informal leaders, the paper examines their political legitimacy and modes of mediation with the state and elites. Using Bourdieu’s concepts of political capital and ‘double dealings’, the paper argues that older women are important informal mediators, whose representational practices involve communal leadership, protest activism, bargaining and vote mobilization. Their multitasking roles are necessitated by their legitimation struggles and elites’ strategies of state capture. The article challenges the dominant media representation of older women activists as ‘a mob for hire’ and offers a more nuanced account of older women’s politics, addressing a blind spot in the literature on politics in Central Asia.     

Gender Gap and Turnout in the 2003 Federal Elections

We examine the gender gap in turnout in Switzerland by analysing the 2003 federal elections. Despite being a standard component in electoral studies, the gender variable is, in most cases, only used as a control variable and its effects and interaction are too often under‐analysed. We focus on individual‐level factors by looking at three types of explanations for the gender gap: (1) resources, (2) political motivations and attitudes, and (3) social capital and integration. Our analysis, based on binomial logistic regression models, shows that compositional and conditional effects play an important role in explaining the persistent gender gap in Swiss electoral turnout.     

Does everyday corruption affect how Russians view their political leadership?

Do Russians’ personal experiences with corruption influence how they evaluate their political leaders and, if so, in what direction? In addressing this question, we focus specifically on small-scale corruption that arises when Russians encounter employees of service provision organizations. We analyze survey data gathered in the summer of 2015 from Russia to trace the links between personal corrupt behavior and political attitudes. We show that participation in everyday corruption lowers a person’s support for the political regime, both as a bivariate relationship and in a multivariate model with controls. Being involved in corrupt transactions reduces support for the regime through two indirect mechanisms: by making the political leadership’s performance seem worse and by heightening perceptions that corruption is widespread among the country’s leaders. We find no support for arguments in the literature that bribery and other forms of bureaucratic corruption help citizens pursue their needs in the face of inefficient state institutions and less developed economies. In Russia, those who frequently encounter corruption are less, not more, happy with the regime.     

Political Parties and Women’s Rights in Turkey

Abstract

Political parties are important political actors, but they are seldom studied in relation to human rights. This article examines the human rights discourse of political parties in Turkey by focusing on women’s rights. The content analysis of party programmes issued by major political parties between 1923 and 2007 reveals significant differences and changes in parties’ approach to women, ranging from no mentioning of women to addressing women’s issues from a feminist perspective. Women’s rights and issues, once neglected practically by all political parties, have gained attention during the last few decades, largely due to women’s activism. While conservative, religious, and Turkish nationalist parties started to display a dualist approach that combines traditionalism with gender equality, social democrat, socialist, and pro-Kurdish parties increasingly employ feminist terminology and analysis.     

The “Servants” of Dehradun: A Changing Relationship between Municipal Councillors and Voters in India

The “typical” municipal councillor in India is usually portrayed in the literature as a political entrepreneur in a clientelistic relationship with voters, providing privileged access to the state in return for electoral support. This article arose out of a lack of familiarity with this portrait and the municipal councillors (known locally as Parshads) of Dehradun. Ethnographic research and the co-construction of in-depth profiles with women Parshads revealed key differences in the ways that they get things done, the types of work they do and the ways that voters make demands. The term naukrani, meaning servant, is proposed to capture these dimensions of their everyday work, and to draw attention to the way Parshads are positioned in relation to an increasingly assertive electorate. It is argued that this positioning of naukrani is revelatory of a particular democratic logic in Dehradun and emergent political subjectivities, particularly among the middle class. By examining naukrani as an imposed positioning, rather than a strategic political identity, the limitations of politicians’ self-authorship are suggested. A focus on women Parshads hints at the gendered nature of this positioning and the implicit masculine bias in conventional understandings of political actors’ role in urban governance.     

The rise of Femi‐Nazis? Female participation in right‐extremist movements in unified Germany

German feminist scholars have recently come to argue that female involvement in right‐extremist causes is grounded in gender‐specific motives. They have also begun to uncover a troubling link between new patterns of female political engagement (ranging from electoral mobilisation to violent streetfighting) and their own efforts to promote an independent women's consciousness since the 1960s. This article develops a typology of New Right women, characterised here as Femi‐Nazis, evincing different levels of sympathy for, identification with, and participation in radical and extremist movements. It then explores five issue orientations distinguishing New Right women of the 1990s from the Old and New Right men of the 1940s and 1990s, suggesting that these women have developed an independent, self‐assertive political consciousness without internalising feminism's broader aims of diversity and inclusion. The article concludes with reflections on the interplay of ‘feminist’ consciousness and ultra‐nationalist qua xenophobic attitudes, and on the dilemmas Femi‐Nazi thinking poses for feminist identity in united Germany.     

Pursuing gender equality in the African University

Abstract

Africa urgently needs strong, creative and intellectually productive institutions of higher learning to address continental knowledge needs in a manner that is closely grounded in the political and cultural aspirations of Africa's diverse peoples; women as well as men. This requires academics and academic administrators working in African universities to be deeply sensitive to the challenges of gender equality, social justice and democratisation. It requires that we dedicate ourselves to building knowledge institutions that demonstrate these basic values and work towards producing both the people and the ideas that will see to their propagation in the wider society. Ensuring equity of access at all levels and in all areas of the higher education sector is a minimal condition for the pursuit of gender equality. This requires developing a combination of institutional and intellectual strategies to advance the practice of gender equality in educational institutions, and to equip them for the production of both the people and the ideas that existing political and policy commitments to gender equality demand.     

Getting On or Getting By? Women, Social Capital and Political Participation

This article considers the utility of the concept of social capital in explaining differences in patterns of political participation among women and men, with particular reference to local politics and governance in Britain. It investigates whether women have access to the same quantity of social capital as men, whether their social capital is of the same type, and whether they use their social capital in the same way as men. Taking forward the 'capital' analogy, the article looks at how rich women are, and the extent to which they invest their social capital in political activity. As well as providing new insights into women's political behaviour, the analysis illuminates key issues for the broader social capital debate—regarding the distribution of social capital within communities, and the nature of the link between networks of sociability and patterns of political engagement.     

Violated Women,Reason, and Lo Político in the Imaginary of the Guatemalan Nation

Guatemalan newspapers are dappled with the spectre of women's violence and the bodily evidence of the military response that is typical for a woman's transgression of gender roles. Gendered representations of violence – so often repeated in the media – engender particular forms of political agency. This article explores how political violence is imagined with women's bodies and suggests that such violence is always built on pre‐existing cultural practices. It argues that gender categorization is paramount to constructing a modern Guatemalan nation that all too often works to exclude women as knowing participants in Lo Político.     

Gender, Parties, and Support for Equal Rights in the Brazilian Congress

This article analyzes a dataset of policy views of members of the Brazilian Congress to assess the nature of support for genderrelated policy issues. It makes three core claims. First, liberal and progressive opinions on gender correspond to party membership more than to sex. Left parties have consistent and programmatic policy positions on controversial gender issues. Women and men are more divided, as are parties of the center and the right. Second, coalitions supporting change differ across policy issues. Support for gender quotas, for example, does not translate into support for more liberal abortion laws. Third, there is a large gap between legislators' attitudes toward gender-related policy and actual policy outcomes. Institutional deadlock and executive priorities explain this discrepancy. This article concludes that although women may share some interests by virtue of their position in a gender-structured society, these interests may be trumped by partisan, class, regional, and other cleavages.     

Participación política y violencia de género en México

This work studies the relationship of women and politics within the framework of the Mexican law on quotas, stressing gender political violence as an explanatory variable of women political underrepresentation. Besides basic information resulting from in-depth interviews and discussion groups, data from the last federal election (2012) are analyzed, and studies on women and political parties in Mexico are reviewed from a critical angle. Research outcomes reveal that the existing dynamics within the political parties –understood as organizations that reproduce traditional gender patterns—represent a crucial variable to explaining the peculiarities of the process through which women can have access to candidatures, and explain their experiences of discrimination, harassment, and violence related to campaigns and parliamentary performance. Also, it is claimed that the implementation of regulatory frameworks aimed at promoting women participation in parliaments depends on the prevailing political party culture in Mexico.