Political Studies ( 1993). XLI. 672-682

Gender and Local Political Interest: Some International Comparisons*

BERNADETTE C. HAYES Universitjs of Surrer

CLIVE S . BEAN A 11s truliuii Nut ional Uii iversitj,

A N D

Since the 1970s. political science research suggests no significant gender differences in overall levels of participation. For example, an examination of current rates of conventional political participation and voter turnout indicates little difference between men and women in either the United States, Great Britain, West Germany. Italy or other western industrial nations.' Despite this disappearance of gender differences in political participation, however, both national and international research suggests an enduring gender gap in political interest. Regardless of country of origin, women remain less politically interested than men.:

* An earlier version of this paper was presented to the annual meeting of the International Social Survey Programme. Bergen. May 1992. The authors are grateful to the referees and editor for helpful suggest ions.

' For the United States. see Margaret Conway. Palirirul Parricrporiori iri the United Stares (Washington. DC. Congressional Quarterly Press. 1985). Sandra Baxter and Majorie Lansing, Womcn and Po1rtic.c.. The In~'f.c.ih/@ Mujorirj. (Ann Arbor. University of Michigan Press, 1983): for Australia. see Clive Bean. 'Gender and political participation in Australia', Airsrraliari Journal qf Social Irsires. 26 (1991). 27693: for Britain. see Gcraint Parry, George Moyser and Neil Day, Poliricul Purticipurion mid Daniocraci, in Brirubi (Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. I992), Pippa Norris. 'Gender differences in political participation in Britain: traditional radical and revisionist models'. Goverrinienr mid Opposiriori 26 (1991 ). 56-74: for West Germany, see Eva Kolinsky. Mbnirri in West Gerniatij, (New York. Berg. 1989): for other European countries, see Carol A. Christy. Ses Drferencc,s iri Poliriral Purtic,iparion (London. Praeger. 1987).

For America. see Stephen Bennett. Aparlij iri .4niwicn. 1960-/984 (New York, Transnational. 1986). Linda Bennett and Stephen Bennett, 'Enduring gender differences in political interest. .4r?iericari Politics Quarter/j. 17 (1989). 105-22; for Australia. see Bean. 'Gender and political participation in Australia'. for Britain. see Susan Welch, 'Sex differences in political activity in Britain'. U'onien & Pofirir.~ 1 (1980). 2 9 4 6 : for West Germany, see Kolinsky. Wonirn in West Gerniuri?.; for other European countries, see Margaret L. Inplehart. 'Political interest in west European women: an histo-rical and empirical comparative analysis', Comparative Poliriral Srudies, 14 (1981). 299-326.

i Political Studies Asociauun 1993. Puhlirhed h) Riackaell Publisher,. I O X Cou,lcv Road. Oxford OX4 IJF. U K and 2% Main Street. Cambridge. MA 02142. LSA

Research Note 673

For example, Bennett and Bennett’s US analysis of the 1984 and 1986 National Election Studies, not only demonstrates that women are significantly less interested in politics than men, but these differences remain even net of situational factors (marital status, employment status) and structural factors (education, occupation, age). Contrary to earlier claims that the gender gap in political interest would close as older, less educated homemakers left the electorate, Bennett and Bennett find that not only are women under 25 years old extremely apathetic about politics, but 25 to 34 year old women are also less attentive than women aged 65 to 74, or even those 75 or 01der.~

Greater political interest among men than women is also found in Australia. For example, Bean’s most recent study of the issue, not only reveals small gender differences in conventional political activities (e.g., voting, personal contacts, campaign and communal activities), but political interest emerges as the primary factor in explaining these differences. Moreover, even accounting for the influence of social background, men remain significantly more likely to be interested in politics than women.4

Previous British research mirrors these findings. For example, Welch, using survey data from 1963 and 1974, shows that while males and females now participate at about the same rate in most political activities (e.g. voting, attending political meetings and campaigning), men are nonetheless significantly more politically interested than women, especially with respect to following politics in the mass media or talking about politics with others. Furthermore, as in America and Australia, these gender differences remain even when structural variables such as occupation and education are introduced in the ana ly~is .~

Similar findings are also echoed in West Germany and Italy.6 For example, Inglehart, using comparative European public opinion surveys from 1973 to 1978, not only demonstrates that a large proportion of women- nearly half of the female respondents - never talk about politics at all, but both West German and especially Italian women rank far below their male counterparts in this respect. Furthermore, although West German males and females were the second most politicized among western European nationalities (after the Dutch), West Germany, however, had the second largest sex difference among all these countries - the largest being in Italy - and in the years when the surveys were taken this sex difference showed no sign of diminishing.’

The fact that women continue to remain less politically interested than men, despite the disappearance of gender differences in conventional political participation, is somewhat surprising to say the least. Yet, as Bennett and Bennett argue, the literature on gender differences in political interest is in conceptual and methodological disarray. Not only have previous studies measured political interest differently but, more importantly, the variety of analytic techniques used to demonstrate these findings have made comparability of the results extremely difficult.’ Furthermore, the issue of local political

’ Bennett and Bennett, ‘Enduring gender differences in political interest’. ‘ Bean, ‘Gender and political participation in Australia’.

Welch, ‘Sex differences in political activity in Britain’. ’ Kolinsky, Women in West Germany; Carol A. Christy, ‘American and German trends in sex

differences in political participation’, Comparative Political Studies, 18 (1985), 8 1-101; Maria Weber, ‘Italy’ in J. Lovenduski and J. Hills (eds), The Politics of /he Second Elerrorare (London. Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981); Inglehart. ‘Political interest in west European women’.

’ Inglehart, ‘Political interest in west European women’. Bennett and Bennett, ’Enduring gender differences in political interest’.

CI Political Studies Association, 1993.

674 Reseurch Note

interest has been ignored by previous research. This omission is particularly unfortunate with respect to women. as not only is female political representation notably higher at the local level' but. as B number of feminists have argued, local issues are particularly salient for women.'O

It is with these shortcomings in mind that the present study focuses on gender differences in political interest in relation to local government. More specifically, using an identically worded item to measure local political interest, we examine the extent to which gender as well as a number of other socio-demographic characteristics may account for variations in this phenomenon within the United States, Australia, Great Britain, West Germany and Italy.

Data and Measures The data used here are from the International Social Survey Programme's (ISSP) first Role of Government survey, conducted in 1985-6." Although six countries participated in the survey. data on local political interest were not collected in Austria so only five can be included in this investigation. The respective sample sizes are 677 for the United States, 1528 for Australia, 1530 for Great Britain, 1048 for West Germany and 1580 for Italy.

Interest in local politics was determined by asking respondents whether they agreed or disagreed with the statement 'I am usually interested in local elections'.'' Response options were: 'agree', 'disagree', and 'can't choose'. To allow ease of interpretation, all responses have been recoded to a single scale ranging from 0 (least interested) to 1 (most interested), with 'can't choose' scored 0.5.

' Donley T. Studlar and Susan Welch. 'Does district magnitude matter? Women candidates in London local elections'. M'estern Polirical Quarterlj,, 44 (1991). 457-66; Susan Welch and Donley T. Studlar. 'The effects of candidate gender on voting for local office in England', British Journal of Political Science. 18 ( 1988). 273-81: Pippa Norris. 'Women's legislative participation in Western Europe'. Wext Europeun Polirks, 8 (1985). 90-101.

' " Martha Ackelsberg and Irene Diamond. 'Gender and political life: new directions in political science' in B.H. Hess and M . Marx Ferree (eds). Analj,:itig Gender: A Handbook of Social Science Resrarrh (London. Sage. 1987); Marian Sawer and Marian Simms. A Wonian's Place: Women and Polirics in Austrulia (Sydney. George Allen and Unwin, 1984): Jane Hall. 'West Germany' in J . Lovenduski and J. Hills (eds), The Polirics qfrhe Second Elecrorute (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul. 1981): Weber. 'Italy': M. Mayo. Wonirn bi the Conimunity (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul. 1977).

I ' The ISSP mas begun in the mid-1980s by established academic survey organizations in a number of countries with the aim ofconducting precisely comparable cross-national attitude surveys of the mass public on selected topics of importance in the social sciences. The data. which are publicly abailable, were supplied by the Zentralarchiv fur Empirische Sozialforschung. University of Cologne, Germany. through the Social Science Data Archives at the Australian National University. The ISSP module itself is always conducted as a self-completion questionnaire, additional to each organization's regular social survey (usually by mail or as a 'leave behind' supplement). For further details on the ISSP see James A. Davis and Roger Jowell. 'Measuring national differences: an introduction to the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP)' in R. Jowell, S. Witherspoon and L. Brook (eds). Errri.sh Soc.iu/ .4rrirudes: Speciul lnrernarional Reporr (Aldershot. Gower, 1989). '' Unfortunately. the data contain no other variables on political interest. Recognizing the

limitation of relying on a single-item measure. we offer two considerations. First, the study of local political interest has rarely been attempted in any form. Second, by studying this phenomenon within an international context, using an identically worded measure, we are able to examine the extent to which interest in local politics is structured by the same underlying socio-demographic factors in different national settings. thus going some way towards a reasonably comprehensive study of the issue. I Political Sliidirs Aisocidrion. IYYI

Research Note 675

TABLE 1. Local Political Interest and Gender by Country

Men Women t-value

Country Means and Standard Deviations”

United States 0.76 (0.42) 0.74 (0.42) 0.58 Australia 0.65 (0.42) 0.69 (0.42) - 1.47 Great Britain 0.62 (0.47) 0.63 (0.46) - 0.69 West Germany 0.84 (0.33) 0.74 (0.39) 4.35*** Italy 0.63 (0.47) 0.49 (0.49) 5.73***

*** Significant at the 0.001 level. * Standard deviations are in parentheses. Source: International Social Survey Programme, Role of Government Survey, 1985-6.

The social background variables included in the model are gender (coded 1 for male and 0 for female), age (measured in number of years), marital status (coded 1 for married and 0 for other), religious denomination ( 1 for Catholic and 0 for other), church attendance (a five point scale ranging from 0 for never to 1 for every day), education (number of years), trade union membership (1 for members and 0 for non-members), subjective social class (1 for middle class and 0 for working class), occupation (1 for nonmanual and 0 for manual)I3 and work status (self-employed, employee versus labour ina~t ive) . ’~ These factors have all been shown to have an influence on political interest at one time or another. Unfortunately, lack of suitable data led to two variables - religious denom- ination and church attendance - having to be excluded from the Italian model.

Descriptive Statistics

Table 1 begins the investigation by comparing the interest levels of men and women in relation to local government elections. This analysis is simply the reported attitudes of males and females on this issue (expressed as means and their standard deviations), followed in each case by a t-test assessing whether the observed differences are statistically significant. A negative sign preceding the 1- value indicates that women are more likely to be politically interested than men, while a positive t-value has the opposite interpretation.

The results in Table 1 indicate only two cases of significant, and even then not dramatic, differences between men and women in political interest. That is to say, only in West Germany and Italy are males significantly more likely to be interested in local government elections than females. In the other three countries, there is no statistically significant gender difference. Furthermore, for two of the five countries, Australia and Great Britain, if anything women are more interested in local politics than men. Thus, contrary to earlier research,

l i Because of the relatively large number of Italian respondents who failed to report an occupation (37 per cent of the overall sample), for these individuals spouse’s occupation has been substituted, where available, as the empirical referent in the Italian data.

l4 Each of the work status categories was dummy coded ‘I’ for the specific category versus ’0’ for all other categories. with labour inactive individuals being the omitted category of comparison. ,c Political Studies Association, 1993

676 Research Note

these data show that females are not in general less politically interested than males. at least as far as local elections are concerned.

Multivariate Results

There is still the possibility, however, that in the countries where no significant gender gap is apparent in the bivariate data, this condition may mask gender differences within particular social groups and thus such a gap may appear under multivariate analysis. For Germany and Italy, on the other hand, we wish to test whether the observed gender differences can be accounted for by other factors. To address these issues, we turn now to investigate the degree to which other socio- demographic variables as well as gender may account for variations in attitudes towards local politics. Table 2 reports the results of the separate regression analyses for our five countries.

An inspection of Table 2 again demonstrates that men are not more politically interested than women overall. With the two notable exceptions of West Germany and Italy, in none of the other countries does a statistically significant gender effect emerge. In the multivariate context, the negative effect of gender disappears in Australia but it remains in Great Britain and also appears now in the United States, indicating that in these two countries females are slightly more inclined to be politically interested than males, although it must be stressed that again these differences are far from statistically significant. Thus, the lack of association between gender and local political interest in three of the five countries in the analysis remains even when structural variables such as occupation and education are controlled.

Turning now to a more detailed examination of these findings. the results from the multiple regression analysis for America show only three socio-demographic variables to be significant in predicting local political interest. These are age, church attendance and education. Interest in local government elections increases with age and with higher levels of education. Also, regular church attenders are more likely to be politically interested than non-church goers and this in particular is a substantial effect. Age is also important in both Australia and Great Britain but while it is the only significant variable for Australia, education, marital status and self-employment (in a negative sense) all emerge as significant predictors of local interest in Great Britain. In both countries, however. age stands out as the strongest predictor, with older individuals being significantly more likely to report an interest in local elections than their younger counterparts.

In direct contrast to the results in the three foregoing countries, gender is a significant positive predictor of local interest in West Germany and Italy. In both these countries males are significantly more likely to report an interest in local elections than females, even when the effects of other socio-demographic variables are accounted for. Age, marital status and subjective class also emerge as significant positive predictors of local political interest in West Germany, while education, trade union membership and working as an employee are significant in Italy. Of these various characteristics, however, age and gender are the two strongest predictors of local election interest in West Germany. while the impact of trade union membership stands out in Italy. Thus, although gender is a significant determinant of political interest in both of these countries, its effect appears to be particularly prominent in West Germany. It is important to i Politicdl Studies Association. 1993

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remember, though, that two variables included in the models for the other four countries are not available for Italy and this could conceivably have some bearing on the Italian results.

So. the results from the multiple regression analyses fail to support previous international research findings that males are always significantly more inter- ested in politics than females. In the current analysis of interest in local elections, no significant gender difference emerged in three of the five countries under examination: the United States, Australia and Great Britain. Indeed, the only consistent effect in the analysis was the relatively strong positive impact of age on local political interest in four of the five countries.

Discussion

The reason why gender is significant only in West Germany and Italy requires discussion. A number of explanations may be offered for this finding, which are compatible with previous international political research. First, in contrast to the United States, Australia and Great Britain, both West Germany and Italy remain strongly traditionalist societies. Studies of cross-national variation in women’s status, including political status, all document the notably higher levels of traditional attitudes among both West German and Italian males in relation to women’s roles. For example, not only is the traditional view of women as housewives still part of the dominant West German culture but for West Germany and Italy alike, public opinion polls show that their populations as a whole continue to hold a higher opinion of men than of women and prefer men over women for public office.’’

Second, for Italy at least, there also remains the confounding influence of the Catholic Church.’’ Not only has the Catholic Church fostered the institu- tionalization of these traditional attitudes, but through its alliance with the politically conservative Christian Democrats (DC). it has maintained a major influence over Italian politics, owing to a large extent to the cultural and political subordination of women. For example, mobilizing women’s votes via both their parish organizations and the Catholic Action organization, this church- sponsored DC vote not only depended heavily on the cooperation and involvement of women, but the influence of the clergy on women’s electoral support for the DC party was further strengthened by the latter’s firm devotion to the church. Women’s disproportional involvement in religious attendance, combined with their low labour force participation rates (Italian females have traditionally maintained one of the lowest labour activity rates in Europe), guaranteed their submissive acceptance of traditionalist Catholic doctrine generally and also their systematic lack of political representation at both the national and local level, Given these historical circumstances. it is little wonder that Italian women remain significantly less politicized than their male col- leagues. Rather, Inglehart aptly concluded, more so than any other western European country Italy represents a ‘legacy of Catholic opposition to female participation in politics’.‘’

’’ See Kolinsky. ’Women in West Germany’: Weber. ‘Italy‘; Inglehart, ’Political interest in west European women’. ’’ See Giacomo Sani, ‘The political culture of Italy: continuity and change’ in G. Almond and S.

Verba (eds), The Civic Culrure Revisired (London. Sage. 1989): David dc Vaus and Ian McAllister, ‘The changing politics of women: gender and political alignment in 1 1 nations’. European Journalof Politicul Research. 17 (1989). 241-262: Weber, ‘Italy‘.

’’ Inglchart. ‘Political interesl in west European women’, p. 320. C Political Studies Awxiation. l Y Y 3 .

Research Note 619

Third, although many changes are now underway in both countries. to a large extent these changes reflect a post-war generational effect.’’ For example, Italian women were not granted the vote until 1945 and German women, although they voted briefly during the Weimar Republic, lost all political rights under Hitler, and did not vote again until after the Second World War. Even then, however. many continued to shun all political involvement because of their wartime experiences. It is only since the emergence of young, educated and qualified women who joined political parties after the late 1960s that gender has become an important consideration in both West German and Italian politics. Furthermore, not only has the latter significantly altered the course of Italian politics (as exemplified by the passage of the national referendum on abortion in 1981 and the declining allegiance of women to the DC party) but, in the case of West Germany, it has also resulted in the introduction of prescriptive quotas on female representation within all the major political parties.’’

Notwithstanding the uncertainties associated with cohort analyses of cross- sectional data, further analysis of the ISSP data lends some support to this explanation for the case of interest in local politics. For example, as Panel A of Table 3 demonstrates, the basic gender difference in mean level of political interest is larger among the pre-war cohort than among the post-war cohort in both West Germany and Italy. In Germany the gender gap declines from 0.138 in the older cohort to 0.072 in the younger cohort while in Italy the decline is an even greater one (from 0.191 to 0.095) and in both cases the difference is only statistically significant at the 0.001 level in the pre-war cohort. More importantly, a similar pattern emerges with the regression coefficients. While in the pre-war cohort West German males have a 15-point lead over females in relation to political interest levels, in the post-war cohort this advantage has been reduced to 10 points. More dramatic, however, is the effect in Italy. Here, the net gender difference in interest level between the two cohorts falls 10 points, from 0.1 12 to a mere 0.012, so that among the post-war cohort gender is no longer a statistically significant predictor of local political interest.” Thus for both these countries, but particularly for Italy, generational change may be considered to play an important role in accounting for gender differences in political interest.

Further, it is interesting to note that while no gender difference emerged in the United States, Australia and Great Britain, an equivalent cohort analysis undertaken for these three countries also contains some weak evidence of a similar generational effect in the American data (see Table 3, Panel B). Here, the regression coefficients suggest not only that females born in the post-war period have negated the slight male lead in political interest in the pre-war cohort; women in the younger American cohort now appear to outstrip men in levels of interest in local elections. However, it needs to be stressed that, like the Australian and British regression results, these American findings are not statistically significant for either cohort.

Finally, there remains the more general question of the differing political traditions of these countries. In contrast to the supposedly positive, participant orientation towards both national and (the relatively independent) local political

’’ Kolinsky, ‘Women in West Germany’; Weber. ‘Italy’: Inglehart, ‘Political interest in west

l9 Kolinsky, ‘Women in West Germany’; Weber. ‘Italy’. ’” Interestingly, in each cohort separately as well as for the sample as a whole, the gender gap,

which always appears larger in Italy than Germany in the bivariate context, becomes smaller in Italy than Germany in the multivariate analysis. \Q Political Studies Association. 1993.

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6.

Research Note 68 1

systems within Anglo-American nations, the political cultures of Italy and West Germany are reputed to be less strongly oriented towards democratic institutions in general, and their local political systems lack the same degree of autonomy.” As early as the 1960s Almond and Verba showed that not only were gender differences in a range of orientations towards politics generally much smaller in the United States and Britain than in Italy and Germany, but these cross-national variations were interpreted as reflecting these differing political cultures.” Notwithstanding the fact that much change has taken place since this study was undertaken (e.g. the attempted decentralization of power in Italy as compared to the increasing centralization of power in Great Britain) and that Almond and Verba’s conclusions did not win universal acceptance even at the time,23 it may be that differences in the broad political culture also help account for the contrasting patterns of gender and political interest between the Anglo- American and continental European nations in our study.

Conclusions

We draw two main inferences from our research on local political interest. First, with the two exceptions of West Germany and Italy, men are not politically more interested than women. However, although we conclude on the basis of our own analysis and also from the evidence of other related research that these two countries are more likely than the other three in our study to represent a changing historical exception to a more general pattern,24 we recognize that only further research which includes a larger range of countries can ultimately confirm this hypothesis. Second, the lack of association between gender and local interest in the United States, Australia and Britain remains even with the inclusion of situational and structural variables in the analyses. Thus, contrary to previous international research, as is now the case with political participation generally, sex per se is not by and large a distinguishing factor in explaining local political interest.

The implications of this finding for political science research are threefold. First, assertions that women have less well-developed political orientations in some sense than men are premature. A more accurate conclusion may be that women’s interest in ‘politics’ does not reflect the same range of activities and issues as that of men. For example, while male political interest may be equally divided between national and local level political activity, local rather than national issues and elections may be of particular interest to women. In fact, recent research on women’s community activism in the United States, Great Britain and elsewhere all point to the importance of this distinction for women. Unfortunately, given the absence of alternative indicators of political interest within the International Social Survey Programme data, we are not able to test these speculations here. However, such an enquiry would undoubtedly be a fruitful avenue for further exploration. Second, from a methodological point of

” See Gabriel A. Almond and Sidney Verba. The Civic Culture (Princeton, N J , Princeton University Press, 1963); Albert Mabileau, George Moyser, Geraint Parry and Patrick Quantin, Local Poliiics and Participation in Brifain and France (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989).

Almond and Verba, The Civic Culture, pp. 387400. 23 David P. Conradt, ‘Changing German political culture’ in G. Almond and S . Verba (eds). The

74 Inglehart, ‘Political interest in west European women’. Political Studies Associauon. 1993.

Civic Culfure Revisited (London, Sage, 1989); Sani, ‘The political culture of Italy’.

682 Research Note

view, the operationalization and investigation of political interest demands immediate attention. Not only have previous studies defined the concept in a multitude of ways but, as previously explained, the variety of statistical techniques used to demonstrate these findings have made comparability of the results, in both national and cross-national contexts, extremely dubious. Lastly, while there is a clear need for future international research in this area, it should reflect the realities and concerns of women’s lives. In other words, what is needed is a radical reworking of the conventional territory of political analysis to take into account not only the issue of local politics, but also the range of concerns and the diversity of women’s (as well as men’s) political experiences.

(- Political Studies Asocraiwn. 1993