School Experiences and the Gender Gap in Attitudes among Adolescents

Gender differences in attitudes towards policies and democracy have been an important focus of research for some time. More recently, scholarly attention has shifted to fact that young men are more likely to favor populist right parties, whereas young women position themselves to the left of men. Research typically explains such gender gaps referring to a combination of economic grievances and cultural values in adulthood. However, these factors cannot fully explain gender differences in populist attitudes and in particular lack explanatory power among young adults and adolescents. Against this background, our contribution focuses on school experiences in adolescence, a politically formative phase. Drawing on insights from research on political behavior, political socialization, policy feedback, and educational sociology, we theorize two ways in which school experiences contribute to attitudinal gender gaps. One is mediation, whereby boys and girls may actually have different school experiences, which in turn shape attitudes. For example, girls are known to receive better grades and to be less often punished. Further, most teachers are female, implying that boys lack male role models in their daily school environment. These negative school experiences in turn may be associated with more populist attitudes. A second perspective suggests that boys and girls react differently to similarly negative experiences, suggesting a process of moderation. For example, boys are more prone than girls to “externalize” life problems and less inhibited in adopting rebellious positions, partly due to internalized gender norms. To test our arguments empirically, we conducted a large-N high-quality survey in a sample of around 3,000 adolescents in 7th grade in three German Bundesländer. Our results show that boys are more likely to perceive unfair treatment and worse teacher relations, factors that are in turn linked to indicators of populist attitudes. However, this mediation effect is very small in size. As for moderation, we consistently find that associations between negative school experiences and populist sentiments are stronger among boys. In sum, we show that the gender gap in populist attitudes, that is often observed among adults, already exists in early stages of adolescence, and that in particular gendered reactions to school experiences contribute to explaining their emergence. This has implications for future research on gender gaps and populism, while also informing debates over public policy and the strategies employed by mainstream parties in countering the rise of populism.