Gender Gaps in Political Ambition on Different Levels of Policy-Making

Robin Devroe; Hilde Coffe; Audrey Vandeleene; Bram Wauters

doi:10.1093/pa/gsad019

Gender Gaps in Political Ambition on Different Levels of Policy-Making

Robin Devroe, Hilde Coffe, Audrey Vandeleene, Bram Wauters

Politics, Languages & International Studies

Ghent University

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

2 Citations (SciVal)

Abstract

Women consistently report lower levels of nascent political ambition than men. In this study, we investigate whether these gender differences occur to the same extent across local, national and European levels of policy-making. Using original data collected among a representative sample of young Flemish citizens aged between 18 and 35 (N = 1000), our descriptive results demonstrate a significant gender gap across all levels of policy-making, though the gap is slightly smaller at the local level. Stacked multivariate analyses confirm women’s lower levels of political ambition and show that the gender gap is significantly smaller at the local level compared with the European (but not the national) level, pointing to women’s lower levels of ambition for the European level.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	924-946
Number of pages	23
Journal	Parliamentary Affairs
Volume	76
Issue number	4
Early online date	16 Sept 2023
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1093/pa/gsad019
Publication status	Published - 31 Oct 2023

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the European Conference on Politics and Gender (ECPG) in Ljubljana from 6 to 8 July 2022, and on an internal seminar at Ghent University with colleagues from the research groups GASPAR and CLP. We wish to thank the participants for their valuable feedback. Hilde Coffé would like to thank the International Research Office (University of Bath) for funding a research stay at Ghent University while working on the project

Funding Information:
This work was supported by a Research Grant of the Flemish Research Foundation (FWO) [grant number 12ZZ821N] and by a Research Grant of the Special Research Fund of Ghent University (BOF) [grant number BOF.DPO.2018.0032.01]. The funders were not involved in the development of the study and the article.

Keywords

Gender
Multilevel politics
Political ambition
Political representation
Second-order elections

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Law
Sociology and Political Science

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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10.1093/pa/gsad019

Cite this

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abstract = "Women consistently report lower levels of nascent political ambition than men. In this study, we investigate whether these gender differences occur to the same extent across local, national and European levels of policy-making. Using original data collected among a representative sample of young Flemish citizens aged between 18 and 35 (N = 1000), our descriptive results demonstrate a significant gender gap across all levels of policy-making, though the gap is slightly smaller at the local level. Stacked multivariate analyses confirm women{\textquoteright}s lower levels of political ambition and show that the gender gap is significantly smaller at the local level compared with the European (but not the national) level, pointing to women{\textquoteright}s lower levels of ambition for the European level.",

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Gender Gaps in Political Ambition on Different Levels of Policy-Making

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

UN SDGs

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