Economic shocks and political outcomes by gender and across generations

The gendered nature of socio-economic disadvantages and their consequences receives extensive scholarly attention in the social sciences. In political science, gender differences in political outcomes are increasingly salient, especially in younger generations. In sociology, there is a longstanding literature documenting that economic shocks have severe consequences for men’s well-being, but less so for women, due to material and non-material differences between men and women in the experience of the shock.
Here, we argue that men’s stronger political reactions to economic shocks are a general mechanism relevant for a broad range of political outcomes. We focus on unemployment, a disruptive life event with negative economic, social, and psychological consequences. We argue that in response to unemployment, men increase support for leftist economic policies and, simultaneously, become more alienated from politics. This is because job loss is a more severe economic shock for men, both in objective terms (the economic shock is bigger for the typical male breadwinner of the household) and in subjective terms (the male breadwinner role is internalized in conservative gender role attitudes). We expect the gender differences in the political reactions to unemployment to be smaller in younger generations, as both mechanisms change over time: women increasingly hold non-traditional social positions and less unequal economic status in the household, and gender roles are shifting due to broader processes of value change.
Empirically, we rely on cross-sectional data from the European Social Survey (ESS) to document cross-national evidence for our proposed patterns. Additionally, we use longitudinal data from the Dutch LISS panel using panel fixed effects models to improve our inferences. Results based on pooled OLS analyses of the ESS data show the existence of a gender gap in associations between unemployment and redistributive attitudes and political interest. Additionally, we find evidence in line with our arguments about conservative gender role attitudes and male breadwinners driving these gender gaps in reactions to unemployment. Some of these gender gaps in associations with unemployment are smaller for more recent cohorts for individuals with more liberal gender role attitudes, and for individuals living in a partnership. The analyses with the LISS data will investigate the underlying mechanisms regarding material and non-material factors more precisely.
We conclude that women respond differently than men to negative economic shocks as traditional gender roles for women soften the repercussions of unemployment, while the reverse is true for men – this may further decrease in the future.