The Cultural Sources of the Gender Gap in Voter Turnout

Recent publications argue that the traditional gender gap in voting has decreased or reversed in many democracies. However, this decrease in the gender gap may apply only to some types of elections. Building on the existing literature, we hypothesise that although women participate at the same or higher rates as men in national elections, they participate less in supranational elections. We investigate this possibility empirically by analyzing the evolution of gender gap in voter turnout in elections to the European parliament (EP). We make three important contributions. First, we show the presence and stability of the traditional gender gap in EP elections. Second, we find that gender differences in political interest are the main source of this gender gap. Third, these gender differences in political interest are, in turn, context-dependent. They are strongly associated with cultural gender differences, which we capture through differences in boys’ and girls’ maths scores.