Traditional or Not? – The Development of Political Gender Role Attitudes at the Beginning of Secondary School

Children’s political gender role attitudes do not only shape their future political thinking and behavior but also influence their political knowledge (Delli Carpini and Keeter 1992), interest (Bos et al. 2022), and efficacy (Fraile and Marinova 2024). Understanding these attitudes is therefore of crucial importance for research on political socialization. Political gender role attitudes vary among children, and these differences can largely be attributed to socialization processes within the family – for instance, gender role attitudes are strongly shaped by the parental division of labor (Kamper 2024). Besides family, school is another important agent of political socialization (Fox and Lawless 2014). At school, children are not only influenced by the curriculum, but also by their interactions with teachers and peers. This raises the question of whether these school experiences affect children’s political gender role attitudes. Because children are exposed to new circumstances especially after moving on to secondary school (Munser-Kiefer and Martschinke 2018), which in Germany takes place after the fourth grade, this article focuses on the development of gender role attitudes among students during the fifth grade and thus closes an existing research gap. For analyses panel data from our research project on political socialization is used, in which almost 800 children were surveyed twice, once at the beginning of fifth grade and once immediately after finishing fifth grade. First results indicate that political gender role attitudes partly change during fifth grade: some children adopt more traditional attitudes, whereas the attitudes of other children become less traditional. The aim of this article is to describe these developments and to explore their causes: Which children show certain changes and what role do class or school level factors play in this context?