Studies show that traditional gender attitudes – support for a division of gender roles in work, family and other areas of life, including political, that is based on the belief in gendered separate spheres (Davis, Greenstein 2009) – are linked to voting for the radical right parties (Christley 2021). In this paper we extend these studies and analyze the link between gender ideology and populist attitudes. We focus on the gender traditionalism in politics and explore whether people holding populist views also exhibit more traditional gender attitudes. In the analysis we control for other factors that may influence the relationship, such as, other sociopolitical attitudes, party and ideological identity, political efficacy, gender, age, education and social status.
For the study we employ data of a nationally representative survey that was conducted in May – July, 2024 in Lithuania (relatively young democracy, member of the EU and other international democratic organizations) under the RECONECT project (S-VIS-23-14). The sample size was 1257 respondents and the survey included questions from two modules of the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP): “2022 Family and Changing Gender Roles V” and “2023 National Identity & Citizenship”. This merger allowed to include items for both populist attitudes (included into the module “2023 National Identity & Citizenship”) and gender ideology (available in the module “2022 Family and Changing Gender Roles V”) in the same questionnaire. We employ descriptive and multivariate inferential statistical methods for the empirical analysis.
References:
Christley, Olyvia R. 2022. “Traditional Gender Attitudes, Nativism, and Support for the Radical Right.” Politics & Gender 18(4): 1141–67. doi: 10.1017/S1743923X21000374.
Davis, Shannon N.; Greenstein, Theodore N. 2009. “Gender Ideology: Components, Predictors, and Consequences.” Annual Review of Sociology 35: 87–105. doi: 10.1146/annurev-soc-070308-115920.