How and why do women and men vote differently

This paper describes how women and men vote differently in western European and US elections and seeks to explain when and how this difference arises in a person’s life-course. Our premise is that the contemporary gender gap is directly linked to the transformation of party systems following the information revolution, and in particular, the rise of education in sorting voters on the transnational cleavage. The paper concludes by using several sources of cross-sectional and panel data to test its claims. We find that the educational choices a person makes are highly gendered and are a key factor mediating the effect of gender on voting. However education does not work in the expected way for it is the field of a person’s education rather than the level of their education that is decisive.