It’s fairly well established that gender roles are absorbed and established at a very young age, with significant implications for children as they age. New research from the University of Bologna illustrates how these roles influence the subsequent engagement with politics of children as they get older.
The researchers studied adolescents and young adults aged between 15 and 30 from across Italy, and found that young males were far more likely to be engaged with politics, whether that be joining a party, protesting, contacting a politician, or trying to influence government policy. Young women, by contrast, would tend to gravitate towards civic activities, such as volunteering and charity work.
Political engagement
The authors say that previous research has suggested that higher participation among men was down to higher income and education levels, while also arguing that women’s greater domestic responsibilities meant little time for politics was available.
The new study dismisses these outdated notions however and finds that even when controlling for socioeconomic and educational background, women lag behind men in terms of political engagement.
Bigger factors are various traits, such as leadership, autonomy, and self-affirmation, which are culturally seen as manlike and are taught to boys through school, by peers and family, and even by the media. This in turn makes boys more confident both in expressing their political views and then defending them.
“The findings suggest that reducing the gender gap in political participation requires to give girls from an early age the opportunity to exercise leadership, experience a sense of agency and gain a critical awareness of the constraints and barriers they face as women to overcome them. Educational programs on gender equality, Youth Participatory Action Research, and girls’ empowerment projects may serve to this scope,” the researchers say.
Gender norms
Despite this, the researchers also note that gender gaps in voter turnout are minimal to almost non-existent. This trend has been clear across national parliamentary elections, local elections, and European parliamentary elections. Indeed, in Italy, the researchers note that women have voted equally to men practically since they were first given the vote.
While participation may be equal, however, the reasons why women and men vote appear to be very different. The researchers note that men view voting as a logical part of their political behavior, whereas women view it instead as part of the stereotypical role of a woman in terms of her civic duty and conscietiousness.
“Studying youth engagement is highly informative because participation at a young age is conducive to future engagement in one’s life course,” the authors conclude. “Future research should further examine the evolution of gender differences over time, their causes and effects among younger generations, as well as their impact on political equality.”
“While the current era of the #metoo movement suggests that gender dynamics may be undergoing new and promising social changes toward greater female involvement, the existing data on the persistence of gender gaps in participation among youth—also confirmed by our results—poses important questions on the factors that determine differential preferences for specific typologies of actions by men and women.”
