Same Same But Different. The Gender Gap in Political Participation and the Influence of Gender Attitudes

This study explores how gender role attitudes and the broader gender culture shape gendered patterns of political participation in West and East Germany. Conceptualizing gender as a multilevel social structure, the study develops a heuristic frame-work explaining how consonance and dissonance between women’s individual gender role attitudes and dominant gender culture influence traditional gender gaps in political participation. Analysis of German General Social Survey data (1991-2016) reveals a tripartite model of intra- and inter-gender differences: 1) non-egal-itarian women participate less than conflicted egalitarian and egalitarian men, 2) egalitarian women participate more than non-egalitarian women, and 3) egalitarian women participate less than conflicted egalitarian and egalitarian men. The study further shows that gender culture moderates these dynamics: in East Germany, with its more egalitarian gender culture, gender gaps between egalitarian women and egalitarian men are non-existent.