Studies on electoral gender gap have documented a historical transition from women favoring conservative parties towards partisan convergence, side by side with a new “modern” gender gap, whereby women are more leftwing than men. In their developmental theory Inglehart and Norris (2000,2003) emphasized the role of structural factors and values in the explanation of those variations – over time and between and within countries. Generational effects take place because the circumstances of a certain period powerfully affect the young people of that time, and these effects persist over the lifecycle of this cohort’s members (Mannheim, 1952). Accordingly, generational change may serve to regulate the impact of socioeconomic and value change over time, first sparking a process of gender dealignment (women become politically similar to men) and later on realignment (modern gender gap).
While some aspects of Inglehart and Norris's theory were examined empirically (e.g. Giger, 2009), studies have failed to give systematic attention to cohort effects or to the contribution of cohort replacement to aggregate change in the electoral gender gap. The present research addresses that lacuna by an over-time cross-country comparison in three strategically-selected cases. Methodologically, since differences between cohorts cannot be inferred from age effects at a single point in time, this research will utilize a technique (Yang & Land, 2006) which aids in more accurately identifying generational effects that persist over the lifecycle and between periods, using data from repeated cross-sectional surveys.
Briefly, the US case shows how generational replacement can be explain a well-established transition to a “modern” gender gap. Britain, which has experienced a mixed gender-gap since the 1980s, illustrates the contribution of our approach to clarifying what underlies apparently unclear trends. Finally, the Israeli case demonstrates how systematically distinguishing cohort effects from the effects of age and period reveals a previously unacknowledged gender gap.
