The gender gap in political interest revisited

DOI10.1177/0192512119860260
Published date01 September 2020
Date01 September 2020
Subject MatterArticles
https://doi.org/10.1177/0192512119860260
International Political Science Review
2020, Vol. 41(4) 473 –489
© The Author(s) 2019
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/0192512119860260
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The gender gap in political interest
revisited
Monica Ferrín
University of A Coruña, Spain
Marta Fraile
IPP, CSIC Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, Spain
Gema M García-Albacete
Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain
Raul Gómez
University of Liverpool, UK
Abstract
To what extent does conventional survey measurement capture the political interest of men and women
equally well? We aim to answer this question by relying on unique data from a national online survey in
Spain, where we used various questions unpacking the standard indicator of political interest. The findings
show that men and women nominate different personal political interests. We also find that the gender
gap in political interest vanishes once these specific interests are taken into account. This suggests that at
least part of the documented gender gap in general political interest might be due to the fact that, when
prompted to think about politics, women disregard their own specific political interests and instead focus on
the dominant, male-oriented understanding of politics.
Keywords
Political interest, gender gap, survey measurement, political socialization
Introduction
Empirical research consistently shows political attitudes to be gendered. In general terms, females
appear to be less engaged than males in many aspects of the political realm. For example, men tend
Corresponding author:
Marta Fraile, Institute of Public Goods and Policies, IPP, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, C/Albasanz,
26–28, Madrid 28037, Spain.
Email: marta.fraile@csic.es
860260IPS0010.1177/0192512119860260International Political Science ReviewFerrín et al.
research-article2019
Article
474 International Political Science Review 41(4)
to be more likely than women to engage in partisan political participation (Conway, 2001; Quaranta
and Dotti-Sani, 2018). Women also tend to declare less interest in politics than men (Fraile and
Gómez, 2017a; Fraile and Sánchez-Vítores, 2019; Kittilson and Schwindt-Bayer, 2012). Last but
not least, in most advanced industrialized democracies women appear to be less knowledgeable
about political matters than men (Fraile, 2014; Fraile and Gómez, 2017b). However, most of these
findings rely on evidence from conventional large-scale surveys, which have used similar questions
for decades under the assumption that they are all interpreted in the same way by both genders.
One such example is the standard question used to measure political interest – ‘how interested
would you say you are in politics?’ Despite the polysemy of the concept of politics, research on
political interest tends to operate with this survey question, which asks about ‘politics’ in an abstract
manner. While this has enabled scholars to compare levels of interest and involvement in ‘politics’
as an overarching concept, most studies on political interest take it for granted that the standard
measure compares well across groups (Prior, 2019). The underpinning assumption tends to be that
this abstract formulation captures equally well women and men’s personal political interests. But,
to what extent is this the case? In this study, we aim to answer this question by building upon an
emerging line of research on how ‘politics’ is interpreted by different groups of citizens (see
Campbell and Winters, 2008 and Fitzgerald, 2013).
Our study relies on unique data from a nationally representative online survey in Spain, where we
used a set of questions that unpack the standard indicator of general political interest. Findings show
that both men and women interpret the abstract concept of ‘politics’ in a fairly similar manner – which
suggests that the gender gap in political interest captured by surveys may not be driven by different
interpretations of the abstract concept of politics, as prior scholarship has assumed. However, we find
that men and women are not interested in the same political topics and that the standard indicator of
general political interest correlates strongly with those political issues that men are most interested in.
Women may be personally interested in a wide range of political topics, but many of these are not
factored in when answering abstract questions about general political interest. As most of the gender
gap in political interest is explained by a mismatch between the abstract understanding of politics and
women’s distinct political interests, we suggest that women’s political engagement might be under-
estimated by standard survey indicators. We discuss these findings and their implications in the con-
cluding section.
Theory: Unpacking gender differences in political interest
Political interest is a subjective concept that has been defined as ‘attentiveness to politics’ (Zaller,
1992: 18), or the ‘degree to which politics arouses a citizen’s curiosity’ (van Deth, 1990: 278).
However, measuring such an abstract concept is not an easy task. First, political interest is not
exactly the same as its consequences, among which are political discussion or political engagement
(van Deth, 1990). Second, in order to measure interest in politics it is necessary to decide what
exactly is understood by the word ‘politics’ – a decision that may not always be neutral. Most
research on the topic simply assumes politics to be a ‘general, broadly defined domain’ that can be
measured with a single question about ‘general’ political interest, or interest in ‘public affairs’ or
‘national politics’ (Prior, 2019: 41).
Only a few studies have attempted to measure political interest by asking separate questions
about different political domains (e.g. interest in local, national and international politics, see Coffe,
2013 and Sánchez-Vítores, 2018) or topics (see, e.g. Campbell and Winters, 2008; Brese et al.,
2009). However, the association between all of these measures is frequently interpreted as evidence
that people who are interested in a given policy area are also interested in other policy areas (Prior,
2019: 56), and that political interest in abstract terms is therefore a one-dimensional concept.

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