Jennifer Curtin
Politics and Public Administration Group
20 October 1997
Contents
Major Issues Summary
Introduction
History of the gender gap in
Australia
Recent gender differences in voting patterns
in Australia
How other variables intersect with gender
Income
Age
Cross-national trends
The United States
Britain
Discussion and conclusions
Appendix: House of Representatives Elections
1987-96
Endnotes
Over the last decade there has been a marked increase in
interest in what has been labelled the gender gap. While generally
there has always been a gender gap in terms of the representation
of women and men in the decision-making arenas of politics, the
existence and pertinence of a gender gap with respect to voting
behaviour and political attitudes is still under discussion. Party
strategists and researchers, both in Australia and overseas,
continue to investigate how the gender gap might manifest itself
and what its relevance is to policy proposals and outcomes.
The gender gap is best understood as gender differences in vote.
Between 1910 and 1966 it appears that men on average lent slightly
more support to the ALP than to the Liberal-Country Party
coalition, while a marginally greater percentage of women on
average supported the Coalition compared to the Australian Labor
Party (ALP). There was one exception to this trend, at the 1917
election, where three in four men supported the Nationalist Party
and a similar number of women supported the ALP.
Between 1987 and 1996 the percentage of women choosing the
Coalition has been higher than the percentage of men supporting the
Coalition. The single exception was in 1990 where there was no
difference between the percentage of women and men who intended to
vote Coalition. In 1993, a seven percentage point gender gap
appeared through gains made in the female vote. This gender gap
decreased to one percentage point in 1996, this time largely as a
result of 10 percentage point increase in support from men.
Although the ALP received 49 per cent support from women in
1987, this was still four percentage points lower than men's
support for the ALP. The gender gap closed to two points in 1990
but began to widen again at the 1993 election, representing a
reversal of the longer term trend whereby gender differences in
support for the ALP had been declining over the last 25 years.
While the ALP's gender gap was reduced to five points in 1996, this
was not a result of increasing numbers of women voting ALP, but
because of a drop in the ALP's male vote.
In addition to there being a gender gap between women and men
who support the ALP, more women have voted for the Coalition than
for the ALP since 1987, with a gap of 18 points evident in 1996.
Male support for the ALP is somewhat erratic while the male vote
for the Coalition has been more consistent over time, with 1996
being the first election where the Coalition gained significantly
more of the male vote than the ALP.
The women's vote is not monolithic. Differences between women
are often as diverse as those between women and men. With respect
to income, the Coalition received slightly more support from women
than men in the majority of income groups in the 1996 election,
while the ALP received more support from men than women in every
income group. The ALP also gained considerably less support than
the Coalition from both men and women earning under $25 000. In
terms of age, in the 1993 election, both younger men and younger
women were less likely to show support for the Coalition compared
with older men and women. In the 1996 election, younger women and
men were less likely to support the Coalition than older women and
men, but in contrast to 1993, women and men under 30 were more
likely to vote for the Coalition than the ALP. Support for the ALP
declined with age while support for the Coalition continued to
increase with age amongst both sexes.
Australia is by no means unique in having a history of women
voting more conservatively than men. Research indicates that female
conservatism was for many years a feature of voting behaviour in
Europe and the United States. In the United States this has begun
to change with more women supporting the Democrats than men. The
percentage of women supporting the Democrats increasing from 45 in
1992 to 54 in 1996. Trends in women's voting behaviour in Britain
are more like those in Australia, in that the Conservatives have
consistently done better among women, while Labour has gained more
support from men.
Gender is but one of a number of social cleavages that influence
political attitudes, social values, electoral behaviour and
partisan loyalties. However, it cannot be ignored as a fracture,
either in its own right, or in the way it intersects with other
variables such as income and age. Perhaps it will never be possible
to predict how women will vote as compared to men, or compared to
other women. Such choices are contingent on many other factors.
This dilemma offers a challenge to political parties to think
creatively about working families in all their varieties, in order
to identify interests and to develop issues and policies that will
attract both women and men and, as such, become the ultimate
'catch-all' party.
Over the last decade there has been a marked increase in
interest in what has been labelled the gender gap. While generally
there has always been a gender gap in terms of the representation
of women and men in the decision-making arenas of politics, the
existence and pertinence of a gender gap with respect to voting
behaviour and political attitudes is still under discussion.
Definitions of the 'gender gap' varies across countries. In
North America, the gender gap has referred to a greater number of
women than men supporting political parties to the left of centre.
The coining of such a term resulted from the trends evident in the
1980 presidential election, where eight per cent fewer women than
men voted for Ronald Reagan. Historically, such a gender difference
in a national election was unprecedented. In Britain however, the
gender gap refers to any gender differences in voting, rather than
implying women are more left of centre than men. This may be
because no gender gap in the American sense has become apparent in
Britain.
There are two dimensions to the gender gap or gender differences
in voting. The first relates to the gender ratio of each party's
support or, in other words, what percentage of conservative voters
are women and what percentage are men. The second dimension is the
extent to which women as a group split their vote between parties
and the extent to which men split their vote. Failure to
distinguish these dimensions can lead to a misinterpretation of the
gender gap.(1)
Furthermore, discussion of the gender gap in terms of one
particular election result may not take into account the support
that flows between parties from one election to another. It
necessarily follows that, depending on the shifts of support
between parties, the magnitude of the gender gap will also differ.
As a result, one party's share of the gender vote may have less to
do with gender per se and more to do with the swing either
towards or away from particular political parties.(2)
Thus, the gender gap is more complex than is often presumed to
be the case. Indeed, as one American commentator has noted 'the
gender gap's dominant characteristic is its elusiveness,
materialising in some races but not others, sometimes waxing and
sometimes waning'.(3) Nor is the women's vote a monolithic bloc.
Yet, whatever the definition of the gender gap, the issue of gender
differences in attitudes and voting patterns has acquired a
momentum of its own. In terms of analysis, questions are now being
asked as to how the gender gap might manifest itself, how it has
been used and reacted to by various interests and what has been its
impact on policy proposals and outcomes. In this sense, the
perceived relevance of women's votes and how they compare with
men's, continues to play an important part in the definition of
policy proposals and action.
This paper does not seek to provide an overarching or final
explanation of the gender gap in Australian politics, but rather
examines both dimensions of the gender gap outlined above (that is
how women compare with men within parties and how women and men
compare with their counterparts across parties). The focus is on
both men and women and their potential shifts in voting intention
and party identification. In this paper the gender gap will refer
to gender differences in voting behaviour more generally (for
example, Coalition male vote minus Coalition female vote). The
1987-1996 data analysed below are taken from the Australian
Election Survey data sets supplied by the Social Science Data
Archives at the Australian National University.(4)
The remainder of the paper does the following:
- provides an overview of the history of the gender gap in
Australia
- offers a more detailed analysis of recent gender differences in
voting behaviour in Australia
- examines where Australia fits with cross-national trends
- concludes by arguing that while the gender gap may not be a
systematic phenomenon, it does nevertheless have important
implications for political parties seeking to attract the women's
vote.
At the turn of the century, giving women the right to vote was
seen by many anti-suffragists as a threat to the traditional social
order. There was a fear that women would desert their traditional
roles of caring for home, husbands and children.(5) Yet many
suffragists saw political equality not as a substitute for their
maternal role but rather as an extension of it. Many of the
arguments used by women in their claim for universal suffrage drew
upon notions of the specificity of womanhood and the feminine
qualities that came with this difference.
Furthermore, there was some anticipation in several other
countries that when women first got the vote they would then create
a unified political force. While women in many countries had
organised en masse around issues of suffrage and
temperance, the translation of this into female solidarity as
voters remained a myth. Within Australia, the fear of women voting
as a bloc was never a real issue since women did not form the
majority of those eligible to vote. For example, in Western
Australia in 1899, there were only 20 000 women of voting age
compared to 70 000 men.(6)
Australian studies concerning the gender gap in voting behaviour
during these early years of women's participation as citizens are
largely non-existent. Nevertheless, the view that women were more
likely to be conservative voters than men came to predominate both
here and overseas. This view was based on smatterings of research
conducted overseas, much of which was superficial in its
methodological approach.(7) The exception was The Political
Role of Women, published in 1955, which did indicate a
conservatism on the part of women voters.(8)
Much of the research undertaken around the 1950s and 1960s did
not include gender as a key variable in comparative electoral
studies. Australian political scientists, Goot and Reid, note that
research questionnaires often only used men, based on an assumption
that women would vote the same way as their husbands or fathers.(9)
(There has been some research of late which seeks to dispel this
notion).(10) Even when early research techniques included women in
the sample, women's behaviour was not analysed since it was thought
that interest in politics was largely concentrated among men (even
though 43 per cent of women surveyed said they did have an interest
in politics).(11)
The first Australian academic surveys of political behaviour
were undertaken in 1967, 1969 and 1979. Using this data, Aitkin
published an analysis of the gender gap in these years. He found
that there were gender differences between the parties in terms of
what he labelled party loyalty. Overall, in 1967, the ALP had a
much larger proportion of strong identifiers than did the Liberal
Party. Dividing these party supporters by sex sharpened these
differences. On the ALP side, four in ten men were strong
identifiers while the proportion of women who were strong
identifiers was much lower than this figure. In the non-Labor
parties however, it was women more than men who were likely to be
the strong identifiers.(12)
The male/female variable mattered at every split in Aitkin's
study of the 1967 data. In every sub-group, such as manual workers,
union members, churchgoers, income, age, home-owners, husbands and
wives and so on, men were more likely than women to identify with
the ALP. However, there was not much support for the apparent
conservatism of women as a result of women living longer than men
or that old people tend to be conservative. Aitkin grouped
respondents according to national origin, age and sex and in
every group, that is, not just the group over 60,
women were more conservative than men. The only exception was that
of foreign-born women over 60, who were more likely than their male
counterparts to identify with the ALP, although the difference was
negligible.(13)
In terms of the 1979 data, there was still evidence of a gender
gap across parties and categories. However, class variables had
little impact on the difference between men and women with respect
to ALP/non-Labor partisanship. Rather, religion and church
attendance became much more important for women, while occupation,
union membership, and income were important for men. This is in
contrast to the situation in 1967, where women were more like men
in terms of what determined their partisanship for the ALP. Class
variables became less relevant to women over those 12 years. Aitkin
views the gender gap apparent over this period of time as related
to a 'differential appeal of the parties to the sexes'.(14)
Knowing whether the gender gap is a permanent feature of voting
behaviour or if it is a fickle phenomenon requires historical
analysis which has not been possible because of a lack of data.
Research has recently been undertaken using actual votes as a proxy
for partisanship to estimate the numbers of men and women
supporting the various major parties between 1910 and 1967. While
there is no direct information on the way women and men vote, since
the ballot is secret, a method called 'ecological inference' is
used where the number of women and men in each sub-division (as
estimated by the census) is cross-tabulated with actual
vote.(15)
Between 1910 and 1966 it appears that men on average lent
slightly more support to the ALP (48.4 per cent) than to the
Liberal-Country Party coalition (47.4 per cent), while a marginally
greater percentage of women on average supported the Coalition
(48.9 per cent) compared to the ALP (46.2 per cent). There was one
exception to this trend. At the 1917 election, three in four men
supported the Nationalist Party and a similar percentage of women
supported the ALP. This may be a result of opposite male and female
preferences about military and religious issues, in particular the
conscription referendum of 1917, which were on the agenda at that
time.
Discounting this extreme departure from the general trends,
there has been a tendency for men to support the ALP and women to
support the Coalition since 1910. However, although there is an
average gender gap of 4.3 per cent for the ALP in favour of men,
and an average gender gap of 3.6 per cent for the Coalition in
favour of women, the magnitude of this gap has varied from one
election to the next, with there being little consistency in the
size of the gaps over time.(16) Figures 1 and 2 indicate these
trends in more detail.
Figure 1: Gender Gap for the Coalition
1910-66
Source: Christian Leithner, 'A Gender Gap in
Australia? Commonwealth Elections 1910-96', Australian Journal
of Political Science, vol. 32, no. 1, 1997, pp. 29-47.
Figure 2: Gender Gap for the ALP 1910-66
Source: Leithner, 1997.
This section reviews the more recent trends in the voting
behaviour of women and men in Australia. It focuses first on the
two dimensions of the gender gap mentioned in the introduction: the
gender ratio of each party's support and the extent to which women
and men as distinct groups split their vote between the two major
parties. Second, it desegregates the gender gap by income and age
to examine the extent to which women might be seen to be a 'voting
bloc'.
The following three tables illustrate the gender differential in
votes in the House of Representatives for the Coalition, the ALP
and the Australian Democrats respectively. Looking first at the
Coalition, what is apparent is that at almost every survey between
1987 and 1996, when asked about voting choice, the percentage of
women choosing the Coalition has been higher than the percentage of
men supporting the Coalition. The single exception was in 1990
where there was no difference between the percentage of women and
men who intended to vote Coalition.
Table 1: Vote for Coalition in the House of
Representatives
%Women %Men Difference
1987 43 42 1
1990 43 43 0
1993 48 41 7
1996 52 51 1
Source: Australian Election Surveys,
1987-96.
In terms of consistency over time, the gender gap in voter
support for the Coalition is minimal and not notable except in
1993, where a seven percentage point gender gap is evident. This
gap does not appear to be solely a result of the Coalition losing
the male vote (a two percentage point drop), but rather gains were
made in the female vote (which rose from 43 per cent to 48 per
cent).
More interestingly perhaps, is the closure of the Coalition's
gender gap from seven percentage points in 1993 to one point in
1996. While the Coalition's support from women increased by four
points at the 1996 election, there was a 10 per cent point increase
in support from men, with the percentage of men voting for the
Coalition rising from 41 per cent to 51 per cent. Andrew Robb,
former Federal Director of the Liberal Party, maintains that
despite a swing towards the Coalition across nearly all demographic
groups, a significant characteristic of the 1996 result was the
considerable shift to the Coalition of a segment of the ALP's
traditional male base.(17)
Turning to the ALP, between 1987 and 1990 the percentage of
women who said they voted ALP dropped from 49 to 40 per cent. In
1993, the percentage of women choosing ALP rose again to 46 per
cent, but by 1996 had dropped to a low of 34 per cent.
Table 2: Vote for the ALP in the House of
Representatives
%Women %Men Difference
1987 49 53 -4
1990 40 42 -2
1993 46 52 -6
1996 34 39 -5
Source: Australian Election Surveys,
1987-96.
Although the ALP received 49 per cent support from women in
1987, this was still four percentage points lower than men's
support for the ALP. This is despite the fact that the ALP employed
a 'gender gap' strategy in 1987 which involved a focus on
education, employment, child-care, pensions, families and arguably
provided women with 'no choice' except to vote for the ALP.(18)
While the gender gap closed to two points in 1990, the ALP lost
nine percentage points amongst women, and 11 points amongst men.
Furthermore, the gap began to widen again at the 1993 election,
with 52 per cent of men but only 46 per cent of women supporting
the ALP. This finding represents a significant reversal of the
longer term trend whereby gender differences in support for the ALP
had been declining over the last 25 years.(19)
One paradox of the increased gender differences in support for
the ALP in 1993 is that in the lead-up to the election Prime
Minister Paul Keating hired the former head of the Office of Status
of Women, Anne Summers, as an adviser to design policies for women
voters. That there was no obvious translation of such efforts into
votes for the ALP from women has been attributed to several
factors. It is argued that the electorate could discern no
substantial differences between the women's policies of the parties
and that the ALP's failure to honour its commitment to pre-select
women in winnable seats may have damaged its credibility.(20) In
addition, more women than men favoured John Hewson as a leader,
while Prime Minister Paul Keating was rated more positively by
men.(21)
While the ALP's gender gap was reduced to five points in 1996,
this was not a result of increasing numbers of women voting ALP.
Rather, the ALP's share of the women's vote fell 12 per cent
between 1993 and 1996, while the male vote dropped 13 per cent from
52 per cent to 39 per cent. Overall, at every survey since 1987,
when asked about voting choice, the percentage of women choosing
the ALP has remained lower than the percentage of men choosing the
ALP.
Figures for the Australian Democrats, shown in Table 3, indicate
that since 1987, women have been more likely to vote for the
Democrats than men in the House of Representatives, although the
size of this gap has varied over time. The exception was in 1993,
when there was no difference between men and women. Support by both
women and men for the Democrats peaked in 1990, at 14 per cent and
11 per cent respectively, and dropped significantly in 1993. Some
of this lost ground was made up in 1996. In particular, the support
from women rose by five per cent to eight per cent. Also displayed
in Table 3 is the percentage support for the Democrats in the
Senate. It is evident that the Democrats received considerably more
support in the Senate than in the House of Representatives, but
that the gender gap is more varied, with more men than women voting
Democrats in 1993 and 1996.
Table 3: Vote for Australian Democrats in the House of
Representatives and the Senate
House of Represetnatives Senate
%Women %Men Difference %Women %Men Difference
1987 7 4 3 1987 10 7 3
1990 14 11 3 1990 17 13 4
1993 3 3 0 1993 6 8 -2
1996 8 5 3 1996 13 14 -1
Source: Australian Election Surveys,
1987-96.
The data displayed in Figures 3 and 4 focus on how women as a
group and men as a group have split their votes between the two
major parties. In addition to there being a gender gap between
women and men who support the ALP, with consistently more men than
women showing support, Figure 3 indicates that, except in 1987,
more women have voted for the Coalition than for the ALP, with a
gap of 18 points evident in 1996.
Figures 3: Women's voting choice 1987-96
Source: Australian Election Surveys
1987-96.
With respect to men as a group, the data in Figure 4 indicates
that male support for the ALP is somewhat erratic. The male vote
for the Coalition has been more consistent over time, with 1996
being the first election where the Coalition gained significantly
more of the male vote than the ALP. (For overall results of 1987-96
elections see Appendix).
Figure 4: Men's voting choice 1987-96
Source: Australian Election Surveys,
1987-96.
Examining how the gender gap is intersected by income and age
may shed greater light on the generality of the gender gap and help
us to understand whether it is practical to view women as a
distinct voting bloc.
Income
In terms of vote and income, intuition suggests that those
earning less would be more likely to vote for the ALP since it has
traditionally been seen as the 'workers' party. However, more
recently political parties have had to appeal to a broad range of
voters, moving beyond their traditional reliance on particular
class groupings, because socio-economic status is now a fluid
category. Voters have become increasingly mobile with respect to
jobs, income and material expectations over time.(22) Using the
manual/non-manual distinction as a proxy for class, research shows
that in 1996 43 per cent of manual workers voted Coalition compared
with 44 per cent for the ALP, while 49 per cent of non-manual
workers voted Coalition compared with 36 per cent for the
ALP.(23)
Another measure of socio-economic status is income. Figure 5
displays the cross-tabulation of vote, gender and income using 1996
Australian Election Survey data. The Coalition received slightly
more support from women than men in the majority of income groups,
although the differences are not significant. The ALP on the other
hand, received more support from men than women in every income
group, particularly in the
$ 25-30 000 income bracket, where the difference was
statistically significant(24). It is also evident that the ALP
gained considerably less support from both men and women than the
Coalition in the ALP's traditional groupings, that is those earning
under $25 000.
Figure 5: Vote in the House of Representatives
for 1996 election by income and gender
Source: Australian Election Survey 1996.
Age
With respect to variation between women according to age,
analysis of 1979 survey data highlighted that women born before
1950 demonstrated a preference for non-Labor parties, while there
was a swing to the ALP amongst younger women.(25) More recent
research looks at how age influenced the gender gap in the 1993
election to discern whether there was a generational difference in
the gender gap. Male and female voters were split into two further
sub-groups labelled younger and older voters, using an arbitrary
cut-off of those older and younger than 33. Results showed that
both younger men and younger women were less likely to show support
for the Coalition (34 per cent and 41 per cent respectively)
compared with older men and women (44 per cent and 50 per cent
respectively). However, amongst younger women, more supported the
ALP (52 per cent) than the Coalition (41 per cent). Although
younger people appeared less conservative than their older
counterparts, a gender difference did exist between women and men
in this younger age group who voted ALP (52 per cent and 58 per
cent respectively), with a gap of six per cent in favour of men.
This gap reflects the overall gender gap between women and men who
voted ALP in 1993.(26)
Looking at how age and gender intersect in voting patterns for
the 1996 election, some similarities and differences exist (see
Figure 6). Again younger women and men were less likely to support
the Coalition than older women and men. In contrast to 1993
however, women and men under 30 were more likely to vote for the
Coalition than the ALP, with 50 per cent of women in this age group
supporting the Coalition, compared to only 35.5 per cent supporting
the ALP. While the split between the two parties was smaller in the
30-39 age bracket, support for the ALP declined with age while
support for the Coalition continued to increase with age amongst
both sexes. In every age group, the ALP polled lower amongst women
than men.(27)
Figure 6: Vote in the House of Representatives for 1996
election by age and gender
Source: Australian Election Survey, 1996.
Private polling undertaken by the two major parties around the
time of the 1996 election did indicate differences according to
age. A statistically significant gender difference in support for
the ALP was evident for those in the 18-29 age group, with more men
than women choosing the ALP, and a considerable gender gap was also
apparent in the 30-39 age group and the 40-49 age group. By
February 1996, female support for the ALP was between five and
seven percentage points below that of males across all age groups,
although the gap was no longer significant in the 40-49 age
group.(28) According to a Liberal Party exit poll, the 25-35 year
old male vote for the Coalition increased by 12 per cent to 47 per
cent, which translated into an eight per cent lead over the ALP.
The 35-49 year old male vote also increased by nearly eight
percentage points to 49 per cent.(29) Indeed, Robb has argued that
age intersected with gender (as distinct from gender in itself) is
of considerable importance when analysing the dimensions of
partisan support.(30)
Australia is by no means unique in having a history of women
voting more conservatively than men. Research indicates that female
conservatism was for many years a feature of voting behaviour in
Europe and the United States. The following section gives a broad
overview of women's voting behaviour in Europe, and a more detailed
picture of the gender gap in the United States and Britain.
Up until the 1970s, women were more likely than men to vote for
conservative parties in West Germany, France, Greece, Belgium,
Switzerland, Netherlands, Sweden and Finland.(31) However, since
the mid-1970s this trend has changed in several countries. In
Sweden, women have been less likely than men to vote for the
conservative party, while left voting generally (that is, voting
for the Left Party and the Social Democrats) increased among women
and declined among men in the 1980s.(32) In other Nordic countries,
gender differences in party choice are modest, although there is
some indication of gender differences amongst younger voters,
suggesting perhaps a wider gender gap in the future (assuming that
the voting choice of individuals does not alter with age).(33)
While women continued to form the solid base of support for the
Christian right parties in France and Germany (around 45 per cent)
during the 1980s, the percentage difference between men and women
supporting parties of the left closed.(34)
Looking at women and men's voting behaviour in the 1994 European
Parliament elections (Table 4), it appears that there are
considerable national variations. More women than men supported
parties of the left in West and East Germany, Portugal, Spain and
Denmark. In contrast, in Britain, Luxembourg, Italy, Ireland and
France, women appear more likely than men to be right-wing in their
voting choice. In the latter three countries, there was very little
support by either men or women for parties of the left. In the
remainder of the countries, that is Greece, Belgium and the
Netherlands, there were no significant gender differences in party
choice. This data is not comparable with the national election data
outlined above but does provide a general indication of gendered
voting patterns in Europe in the 1990s.
Table 4: The gender gap in vote for European Parliament
1994
Left-wing vote Right-wing vote
%Women %Men %Women %Men
Belgium 30 27 31 29
Britain 45 51 33 24
Denmark 34 28 43 40
France 12 13 36 33
Germany (East) 50 42 47 49
Germany (West) 40 39 38 41
Greece 52 54 41 39
Italy 7 8 71 67
Ireland 16 18 75 73
Luxembourg 28 30 44 34
Netherlands 30 30 45 46
Portugal 80 76 20 24
Spain 28 27 45 48
Source: Pippa Norris, 'Gender Realignment in
Comparative Perspective' in M. Simms, ed., The Paradox
of Parties, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1996, pp. 109-129.
The United States
It was in the United States that the gender gap was first
highlighted and analysed in some detail by researchers. Evidence
from electoral studies in the 1950s and 1960s showed that women in
the United States were the 'backbone' of centre-right parties,
although not the far right.(35) However, more recently ideas about
women's conservatism have been challenged by the fact that
proportionately more women have begun to vote Democrat. This
phenomenon was what originally became known as the gender gap. Over
time it appears that the gender realignment in the United States
has consolidated over successive elections, with more women than
men voting Democrat in presidential elections. Table 5 highlights
these changes in more detail.
Table 5: The gender gap in the United States
1976-96
% Women % Men
1976 (Presidential)
Democrat 48 53
Republican 51 45
1980 (Presidential)
Democrat 46 38
Republican 47 55
Other 7 7
1984 (Presidential)
Democrat 42 38
Republican 58 62
1988 (Presidential)
Democrat 49 42
Republican 51 58
1992 (Presidential)
Democrat 45 41
Republican 37 38
Other 17 21
1994 (Mid-term)
Democrat 54 43
Republican 46 57
1996 (Presidential)
Democrat 54 46
Republican 37 46
Other 9 8
Source: Everett Carll Ladd, 'Media Framing of
the Gender Gap' in Pippa Norris (ed.), Women, Media
and Politics, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1997, pp.
113-128.
Focusing on the Democrats' share of the vote, it is evident that
the gender gap has widened from four percentage points in 1992 to
eight percentage points in 1996, with the percentage of women
supporting the Democrats increasing from 45 per cent in 1992 to 54
per cent in 1996, an increase of nine percentage points.
Despite there being a gap between men and women who voted
Democrat, between 1948 and 1992, more women have nevertheless
tended to vote for the Republicans than the Democrats. Even in
1992, fewer women voted for the Democrats than for non-Democrat
candidates. Adding together the women's vote for both Perot and
Bush in the 1992 election, 54 per cent of women did not vote for
the Democrats. However, by 1994, this trend had reversed with an
eight percentage point difference between women who voted Democrat
and women who voted Republican. This trend continued into the 1996
election, with the percentage of the vote given by women to both
Perot and Dole (46 per cent) still eight percentage points lower
than the 54 per cent of women who voted Democrat. This represents a
considerable historical shift, since the last time there was a
significant gap between the percentage of women voting for Democrat
and Republican (in favour of the Democrats) was in 1964.
Also of interest is what has happened with the male vote. Prior
to 1992, considerably more men tended to support Republican
candidates over Democrat candidates. Since this time however, the
percentage of men who voted Democrat increased by two percentage
points between 1992 and 1994 and by another three percentage points
between 1994 and 1996. Indeed, the male vote was split evenly
between Republicans and Democrats in 1996. The more recent shift by
men away from the Republicans reduced the gender gap from 11 points
in 1994 to eight points in 1996.
With respect to women, Clinton and the Democrats increased their
support among married and single women in the 1996 election,
especially non university-educated working women. While Democrats
have been making gains with single women since the early 1980s,
gains among married women are new. It is argued that issues of
health and education addressed by Clinton in the 1996 election
campaign, were important to these women.(36)
Britain
Trends in women's voting behaviour in Britain are more like
those in Australia, in that the Conservatives have consistently
done better among women, while Labour has gained more support from
men (Table 6).
Table 6: The gender gap in vote in Britain
1945-97
Labour Conservative
%Women %Men %Women %Men
1945 45 51 43 35
1950 43 46 45 41
1955 42 51 55 47
1959 43 48 51 45
1964 47 47 43 40
1966 51 54 41 36
1970 42 48 48 43
1974 40 42 39 37
1979 38 38 49 45
1983 28 30 45 46
1987 31 31 44 44
1992 34 37 48 46
1997 46 46 33 32
Source: Pippa Norris, 'Mobilising the "Women's
Vote": The Gender-Generation Gap in Voting Behaviour',
Parliamentary Affairs, vol. 29, no. 2, 1996, pp. 333-342.
1997 data from BBC exit polls drawn from a paper forthcoming in
Parliamentary Affairs, vol. 30, no. 4, September 1997.
Early data indicates that in the 1997 election, 46 per cent of
women voted Labour, the highest since 1966. No gender gap is
evident between women and men who voted Labour (although gaps have
not been more than three percentage points since 1970). Also, 1997
was the first time since 1974 that more women had voted Labour than
Conservative. This is a considerable turn-around since in the past
women have proved an average seven per cent more predisposed to
vote Conservative than men, and women were vital to Conservative
wins in the 1980s.(37) Whether this shift by women to Labour
becomes a trend remains to be seen.(38)
Over the last twenty years then, evidence seems to suggest that
in many countries there has been a shift in women's voting
patterns. However, the political complexion of parties is not the
same in every country. For example, with respect to the left in
Italy, the dominant component up until the early 1990s has been
communist with a strong minority socialist presence. In most other
European countries the dominant component is social democratic,
sometimes with a minority communist presence. In Canada and the
United States, the left is dominated by parties which elsewhere
would be considered liberal rather than social democratic.(39)
Similar ambiguities exist with parties of the right, with respect
to the degrees of conservatism-liberalism. This is often related to
the degree of religiosity in various countries, in particular, the
prevalence of Catholicism.(40)
In the 1950s and 1960s, women's electoral conservatism was
thought to be a product of their higher levels of religiosity,
their lower levels of trade union membership and because they lived
longer than their male counterparts.(41) However, as has been
shown, the phenomenon is more complex and, with this recognition of
complexity, have come new efforts at explanation.
There are now two major propositions in the literature which
seek to explain the changing character of the gender gap. The
convergence theory argues that as the life experiences of women
become more similar to those of men then they are more likely to
vote like men. So, as younger women who participate in the paid
labour market and who are more highly educated than previous
generations of women reach voting age, they will come to vote in a
similar manner to their male counterparts.
In contrast to this position is the divergence theory, which
suggests that men's and women's preferences will first converge but
then will diverge as younger women, socialised with more liberal
views than men, particularly in the areas of women's equality,
enter the electorate. The hypothesis is that these women are likely
to prefer left of centre parties since 'women's' issues and
policies tend to be emphasised more by these parties.(42) In both
theories, it appears that male voting behaviour is taken to be the
norm.
Convergence between men and women on both sides of the political
spectrum was evident in Australia up until 1990. Gender differences
re-emerged in 1993, and in 1996, in the case of the ALP, the gender
difference was maintained. Thus, while a divergence has appeared
between the way women and men vote, this is not in line with the
predictions of the divergence thesis, since women have returned to
being more right-of-centre in their vote than men, rather than
becoming more left-of-centre. In all of this, the overall swing in
each election should also be kept in mind.
These findings focus solely on vote. However, the gender gap has
also been used to refer to a pattern that suggests women are more
'progressive', 'liberal' or 'left' with respect to social issues,
women's issues, the environment and foreign policy. Briefly, the
explanations put forward for such a trend include the proposition
that women may embody an 'ethic of caring' which results in
sympathy for the disadvantaged, anti-military stances and the like.
Others argue that these values are the result of political
socialisation, that women are taught to be cooperative, or that
younger women are more liberal with respect to newer issues such as
equality between the sexes.
Recent Australian research indicates that there are few
differences in the attitudes of women and men on economic issues,
while with respect to social issues (such as the death penalty and
the environment) there are only small gender differences, with
women displaying slightly more progressive views in this regard.
However it is with respect to women's issues that the greatest
gender differences occur. More women than men indicated that
changes in equal opportunities for women had not gone far enough,
while more women than men also thought there should be increased
opportunities for women in business and industry.(43)
In conclusion, these researchers argue that women are more
likely than men to endorse policies designed to further women's
equality. While it is parties of the left that have tended to
champion women's rights to economic equality (in the labour
market), it is not clear that these 'women's issues' take priority
over economic and social issues such as employment, taxation and
health expenditure when it comes to choice of party support.
American analysts suggest that party strategists need to acquire
an understanding of women's votes that goes far beyond simplistic
notions of a gender gap.(44) Women's interests are not identical to
men's but neither are women's interests identical to each other.
Differences between women are often as diverse as those between
women and men. Furthermore, to argue that women voters should be
taken more seriously is not to suggest that shifts in men's voting
behaviour, for example their defection from the ALP in 1996, should
not be taken seriously. The competition should not be seen as one
of winning women's votes at the expense of men's or vice versa, but
rather as competition between the parties to catch as many votes as
possible from both sexes.
Contemporary party systems are a product of diverse historical
processes, but in the main, groups based on social class, religion,
language, ethnicity and region became the primary building blocks
for the party political system in most countries, including
Australia. Once established, these party systems were expected to
absorb new social cleavages. Gender was regarded as secondary,
cutting across the primary divisions and, because in many countries
women did not get the vote until after the modern party system was
established, gender issues were drawn into the existing electoral
framework.(45) More recently however, new cleavages have generated
new parties, particularly in the case of the environmental movement
and, in some countries, the women's movement has resulted in the
evolution of women's parties (Iceland is most famous for this,
although a women's party has emerged in Australia and, in 1994,
women threatened to form a women's party in Sweden).
It is not so surprising perhaps, that the ALP in Australia has
been less able to attract women, for it came into existence to
represent the labour movement in the political arena. In these
early days, few women were union members and the labour movement
did not always encourage female membership or support women's
demands for equal access to work and wages. Calls of solidarity
invoking the rhetoric of mateship were very exclusive of women.
Thus, perhaps ironically, the formally egalitarian political party
had its roots in a masculinised political tradition. Women's mass
entry into the paid labour force since the mid 1960s has not been
replicated by equal increases in their trade union membership or
representation in the labour movement's hierarchies.
In contrast, women's concerns at the turn of the century, such
as 'maternal' ideas of citizenship and temperance, fitted easily
with a conservative ideology. The continuing emphasis on women's
domestic responsibilities sat well with many women's views of
themselves.
The women's movement in Australia has been important in
politicising women's issues, encouraging more women to participate
in politics and in drawing attention to the need for parties across
the political spectrum to offer more explicit policies which
address equality for women. However, the academic 'jury' is still
out as to the impact feminism has had on gender differences in
voting behaviour.
Finally, several points need to be made:
- Care should be taken in terms of how women's conservatism is
perceived. One American analyst has suggested that women voters are
more risk-averse, which may be interpreted as averse to change.(46)
In a literal sense this equates with conservatism, whereby women
want to conserve what it is they have. In addition, the
international literature suggests that women are more risk-averse
when it comes to issues of war, defence spending and the
environment, while they are more progressive on issues of women's
equality. Why this has not been translated into partisan support
for parties of the left-of-centre remains an issue for party
strategists
- When the gap around a particular issue, for example employment,
is not substantively significant it becomes difficult for political
parties to design policies to exploit such a gender difference.
However, this does not mean gendered perspectives on policy
development are not useful. Rather, further questions need to be
asked if the reasons why women and men display similar attitudes to
issues but vote differently are to be better understood
- It is important to recognise that gender is but one of a number
of social cleavages that influence political attitudes, social
values, electoral behaviour and partisan loyalties. However, it
should not be ignored as a fracture, either in its own right, or in
the way it intersects with others. Perhaps it will never be
possible to predict how women will vote as compared to men, or
compared to other women. Such choices are contingent on many other
factors. This dilemma offers a challenge to political parties to
think creatively about working families in all their varieties, in
order to identify interests and to develop issues and policies that
will attract both women and men and, as such, become the ultimate
'catch-all' party.
In conclusion, this paper has argued that the gender gap is a
somewhat elusive phenomenon. But, in this day and age of decreasing
party identification and 'tweedledum and tweedledee' politics, this
is not to say gender differences are fickle or irrelevant. Rather,
like the electorate it reflects, the influence of gender on voting
is subtle and complex.
Two Party Preferred Vote
Election ALP Liberal/
National Parties
% %
1987 50.8 49.2
1990 49.9 50.1
1993 51.4 48.6
1996 46.4 53.6
Source: Gerard Newman, Federal Election
Results 1949-96, Background Paper no. 1 1996-97, Canberra:
Parliamentary Research Service, 1996.
- Christian Leithner, 'A Gender Gap in Australia? Commonwealth
Elections 1910-96', Australian Journal of Political
Science', vol. 32, no. 1, 1997, p. 31.
- Leithner, p. 31.
- Karen Paget, 'The Gender Gap Mystique', American
Prospect, no. 15, Fall, 1993, p. 94.
- The number of responses to each of the surveys is approximately
1 500 people, selected randomly.
- Marian Sawer and Marian Simms, A Woman's Place, 2nd
ed., Allen and Unwin, St Leonards, 1993, p. 2.
- Sawer and Simms, p. 4.
- see for example S M Lipset, Political Man, Heinemann,
London,1960; C Burns, Parties and People, Melbourne
University Press, Melbourne, 1961; M Curtis, Comparative
Government and Politics: An Introductory Essay in Political
Science, Harper and Row, New York, 1968.
- M Duverger, 1955, The Political Role of Women, UNESCO,
Paris.
- Murray Goot and Elizabeth Reid, Women and Voting Studies:
Mindless Matrons or Sexist Scientism?, Sage, London, 1975, p.
5.
- Bernadette Hayes and Clive Bean, 'Political Attitudes and
Partisanship Among Australian Couples: Do Wives Matter?', Women
and Politics, vol. 14, no. 1, 1994, pp. 53-82.
- Goot and Reid, p. 7.
- Don Aitkin, Stability and Change in Australian
Politics, 2nd edn., Australian National University Press,
Canberra, 1982, p. 49.
- Aitkin, p. 115.
- Aitkin, pp. 307, 50.
- Leithner, p. 33.
- Leithner, p. 34-36.
- Andrew Robb, 'The Liberal Party Campaign', in Clive Bean et al,
The Politics of Retribution: the 1996 Federal Election,
Allen and Unwin, St Leonards, 1997, pp. 34-41.
- Senator Ryan cited in Sawer and Simms, p. 39.
- Patty Renfrow, 'The Gender Gap in the 1993', Australian Journal
of Political Science, vol. 29, Special Issue, 1994, p. 122. Renfrow
uses the 1993 Australian Election Survey data in her analysis.
- Elaine Thompson, 'Election 1996', Current Affairs Bulletin,
Feb/March, 1996, pp. 4-12.
- Renfrow, p. 128.
- Ian McAllister and Clive Bean, 'Long Term Electoral Trends and
the 1996 Election', in Clive Bean et al, The Politics of
Retribution: the 1996 Federal Election, Allen and Unwin, St
Leonards, 1997, pp. 173-189.
- McAllister and Bean, footnote 5, p. 244.
- The difference was significant at a confidence level of 95 per
cent.
- Aitkin, p. 329-330.
- Renfrow, pp. 122-123.
- However, because the sample sizes for each group were so small,
the gaps were not significant.
- Ian Henderson, 'ALP dispels gender-gap at poll', The
Australian, 1997, p. 3.
- Robb, 1997, p. 41.
- Andrew Robb, 'Is there a gender gap in Australia?', in Marian
Simms, ed., The Paradox of Parties, Allen and Unwin, St
Leonards, 1996, p. 131.
- Vicky Randall, Women and Politics. An International
Perspective, 2nd ed., Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1987, p.
71.
- Diane Sainsbury, 'The Politics of Increased Women's
Representation: the Swedish Case', in Joni Lovenduski and Pippa
Norris eds., Gender and Party Politics, Sage, London,
1993, p. 268.
- Pippa Norris, 'Gender Realignment in Comparative Perspective'
in M. Simms, ed., The Paradox of Parties, Allen
and Unwin, Sydney, 1996, p. 117.
- Nancy Walker, 'What we know about women voters in Britain,
France and West Germany', in Marianne Githens et al., Different
Roles, Different Voices. Women and Politics in the United States
and Europe, Harper Collins, New York, p. 66.
- Norris, 1996.
- Robert Borosage and Stanley Greenberg, 'Why did Clinton Win',
American Prospect, 31, March, 1997, pp. 12-22.
- Sarah Whitebloom, 'Women: The Tories' Last Hope', The
Spectator, 12 April, 1997, pp. 10-11.
- Further analysis on the gender gap in the 1997 UK election is
forthcoming by Joni Lovenduski in the September 1997 issue of
Parliamentary Affairs.
- Mark Franklin, Tom Mackie, et al., 1992, Electoral
Change, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1992, p.
17.
- David De Vaus and Ian McAllister, 'The changing politics of
women: gender and political alignment in 11 nations', European
Journal of Political Research, vol. 17, 1989, pp.
241-269.
- Pippa Norris, 'Elections and Political Attitudes', in Marianne
Githens et al., Different Roles, Different Voices. Women and
Politics in the United States and Europe, Harper Collins, New
York, 1994, p. 49.
- Renfrow, p. 125.
- Renfrow, 1994; David Gow and Patty Renfrow, 'Gender and the
Vote in the 1996 Federal Election', Paper Presented to Australasian
Political Studies Assocation Conference, October, University of
Western Australia, Perth, 1996.
- Paget, p. 101.
- Norris, 1994, p. 47.
- Steven Stark, 'Gap Politics', Atlantic Monthly, vol.
278, no. 1, 1996, pp. 71-80.