Political attitudes: A comparative analysis of the role of gender gaps

Document Type : Basic article

Authors

1 Assistant Profeesor, Department of Political Science, University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran

2 MA in Political Science, University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran

Abstract

Classic political sociology dogmatically considers women, from a political perspective, more conservative than men and accordingly, women’s models of political behaviors are expressed based on their inherent tendencies towards right-wing conservative parties. But new research indicates that in developed countries during 1980’s, women gradually distanced from traditional conservatism and joined democratic groups. In addition, Inglehart’s studies indicate that since 1990’s, not only have conservatism and right-wing tendencies faded in women, but also they support plans and objectives of new left-wing parties which are mostly based on cultural values of post-materialism more than ever. As a results, it seems that the effect of gender gaps has been reconfigured mostly in three models of traditional gap, convergence, and revisionism. Accordingly, the present study aims to investigate the comparison between men’s and women’s political attitudes among 596 students of University of Isfahan in 2016. Accordingly, analyzing the results of the research indicated that firstly, there is no significant difference among men and women in terms of the degree of their tendencies towards democracy and each group supports democratic attitudes to the same extent. Therefore, the claim of hypotheses of classic models about women’s tendencies towards conservatism is rejected in political domains. Secondly, findings also indicated that the degree of tendency towards post-materialist values which construct foundations of New Leftist parties according to Inglehart, is significantly higher among women than men. This issue indicates tha not only have women distanced from rightist attitudes in political domains, but also they have more tendency towards leftist plans based on revisionist models.

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References

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Woman in Development & Politics
Volume 14, Issue 3
October 2016
Pages 329-341

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