The Gender Gap in Youth Political Participation: Evidence from Germany

• Published date: 01 March 2019
• Date: 01 March 2019
• DOI: 10.1177/1065912918775249
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912918775249

Political Research Quarterly

2019, Vol. 72(1) 34 –48

© 2018 University of Utah

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DOI: 10.1177/1065912918775249

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Article

Discourse on the gender gap in political representation

and participation has received increasing attention over

the past decades. Much effort has been devoted to increas-

ing awareness of the existence and the consequences of

gender differences in political life and to implementing

policies countering this discrepancy. However, and not

withstanding such efforts, gender balance is far from

being achieved, and current imbalances are associated

with serious legitimacy problems for democracy (Paxton

and Hughes 2013).

The now extensive literature on gender differences in

political participation stresses that women are less likely

to consider political office or other political activities in

the first place and identifies several explanations (Verba,

Burns, and Schlozman 1997; Westle 2001). Time, socio-

economic resources, and socialization are among the

most prominent reasons for the gender gap. While all

these findings are well-established in the literature, two

points stand out that might question their overall general-

izability. First, research on gender differences in political

participation is dominated by findings from the United

States, the country ranking ninety-fifth out of 185 with

regard to women’s representation in national parliaments

(Inter-parliamentary Union [IPU] 2016). Second, most

studies on the gender gap in participation rest on survey

data from adults (but see Gaiser et al. 2016; Hooghe and

Stolle 2004; Lawless and Fox 2013). While this is a

straightforward approach in political participation

research for obvious reasons, it hardly allows us to exam-

ine the potential of future adults. Studying youth engage-

ment is highly informative because participation at early

age paves the way for future engagement (Duke et al.

2009; Manganelli, Lucidi, and Alivernini 2014).

Addressing both shortcomings, in this paper, we ana-

lyze the gender gap in political participation among

German adolescents. We first examine whether a gender

gap for this specific group, indeed, exists, before we turn

to the questions of which theories of political participation

can explain it and in how far the same independent vari-

ables have different effects on the political participation of

young women and men. For this, we make use of newly

compiled data from 2015. Based on a survey particularly

designed to capture political participation among younger

respondents aged between fourteen and twenty-nine, we

want to qualify the mostly adult-centered theories about

the gap in political participation, which commonly rein-

force gaps in socioeconomic resources and socialization

as major reasons for unequal participation.

Germany—as all other democracies—has a long his-

tory of unequal political participation by sex. Especially

before German reunification, both voting participation

and membership in political parties was considerably

lower among women than men (Cornelissen 1993), differ-

ences that were also reported for the first federal election

after reunification in 1990 (Metje 1991). However, since

the 1990s, these patterns gradually began to change. For

several reasons, we expect today’s German adolescents to

represent a “least likely case” for gender differences in

major explanatory variables and, thus, in political partici-

pation. Not only is the role of women in German politics

775249PRQXXX10.1177/1065912918775249Political Research QuarterlyPfanzelt and Spies

research-article2018

1University of Cologne, Germany

Corresponding Author:

Hannah Pfanzelt, Cologne Center for Comparative Politics, University

of Cologne, Herbert-Lewin-Street 2, 50931 Köln, Germany.

Email: hannah.pfanzelt@web.de

The Gender Gap in Youth Political

Participation: Evidence from Germany

Hannah Pfanzelt1 and Dennis C. Spies1

Abstract

In this article, we consider the gender gap in political participation by analyzing recent survey data about German

adolescents. Differentiating between institutional, non-institutional, and expressive participation, we show that, even

in Germany where there is strong gender equality, type-specific gender differences persist. Testing for resource,

socialization, and attitudinal explanations, in multivariate regression analyses, we identify socialization in civic forms of

participation together with the lower confidence of women in their personal and political skills as major drivers for

the sexual differences in political engagement, especially so for institutionalized forms of participation.

Keywords

political participation, political socialization, gender differences, Germany, adolescence