Gender differences in left-right ideology: European men are more right-wing, women are more centrist?

Abstract

Since the 1990s, women appear to have become more left-wing or liberal-oriented compared to men (Dassonneville, 2020). In this paper, we examine whether this observation holds in the more recent survey data from Europe. We show that the exclusive focus on differences in average scores provides an incomplete picture of gender differences in ideology. Since both men and women tend to be centrist, the observed gender differences in averages may be due to differences in the relative popularity of the middle point of the scale. The analysis uses the ninth wave of the European Social Survey data (ESS 9.3), which covers 29 European countries. The results show that European women are, indeed, on average, positioned to the left compared to men. However, additional analyses revealed that these differences are partly due to men's preference for rightist ideological positions and partly to women's relatively more frequent positioning on the scale midpoint.

Keywords

• left-right ideology
• gender differences
• public opinion
• Europe