Good Girls Go to the Polling Booth,
Bad Boys Go Everywhere:
Gender Differences
in Anticipated Political Participation
Among American Fourteen-Year-Olds
Marc Hooghe, Catholic University of Leuven
Dietlind Stolle, McGill University
ABSTRACT. Participation research routinely reveals a gender gap with
regard to most forms of political engagement. In the recent literature,
differences in the availability of resources and civic skills are usually invoked
as an explanation for this pattern. This theory focuses primarily
on adult behavior and has not as yet been investigated among young people,
for whom we can assume that resources are distributed more equally.
In this article, we examine gender differences in the anticipation of political
participation among American fourteen-year-olds, building on the
1999 International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement
study (n = 2,811). First, the results show that girls at this age
mention even more actions they intend to engage in than do boys, so
clearly the gender gap with regard to the level of participation has not yet
emerged at that age. Second, we observe distinct patterns with regard to
the kinds of actions favored, with girls being drawn more towards social
movement-related forms of participation than boys, and with boys favoring
radical and confrontational action repertoires as compared to
girls. The results are important for the reconceptualization of the concept
of political participation as well as for theories that explain the gender
gap. [Article copies available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery
Service: 1-800-HAWORTH. E-mail address: <docdelivery@haworthpress.com>
Website: <http://www.HaworthPress.com> © 2004 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All
rights reserved.]
Women & Politics, Vol. 26(3/4) 2004
http://www.haworthpress.com/web/WP
 2004 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.
Digital Object Identifier: 10.1300/J014v26n03_01 1
Gender differences with regard to political participation have proven
to be remarkably persistent. In most liberal democracies, women participate
less intensively in political life, they profess to be less politically
interested, and, with a few major exceptions (the Scandinavian countries,
for example) they are dramatically underrepresented at the parliamentary
and executivelevel (Atkeson and Rapoport 2003; Burns, Schlozman,
and Verba 2001; Burns 2002; Carroll 2003; van Deth 2000;
Inglehart and Norris 2003). While some of the earlier studies on this
topic operated under the assumption that these gender differences will
gradually disappear as women catch up with men in the fields of education,
professional careers, and income, recent evidence suggests that the
difference is still highly significant. Moreover, even where this gap has
decreased, it has done so at a very slow pace (Bennett and Bennett 1989;
for a review see Inglehart and Norris 2003).
By now, it has become generally accepted that the persistence of this
gender gap cannot be attributed to one single factor, but rather should be
seen as the result of an interplay of various elements (Burns, Schlozman,
and Verba 2001: 358-9). On the one hand, some authors stress the
fact that women have fewer resources available than men with regard to
income, education, and time as well as civic skills. Because of childrearing
responsibilities, for example, women have less discretionary
time or resources available to spend on political participation and other
forms of voluntary engagement (Okin 1989; Phillips 1991). Other authors
focus on the role of institutions, and claim that the male-dominated
culture of associations and political parties (especially at the elite
level) actually inhibits women from gaining full access to the political
realm (Lowndes 2000; Norris 1997). Still others highlight that marriage,
motherhood and homemaking might socialize women out of politics
(Andersen 1975; Burns 2002: 480; Jennings and Niemi 1981).
A major limitation of these empirical studies, however, is that they
include only adult respondents. This focus on a population above the
voting age has major consequences. First, it is altogether likely that we
are missing part of the story, given our knowledge that gender roles take
root quite early in the life cycle, and certainly well before the age of
eighteen (Brown and Gilligan 1992; Maccoby 1998; Maccoby and Jacklin
1974). The inclusion of younger respondents, therefore, might inform
us about the way gender roles and expectations actually affect political
involvement early on.
Second, the study of young respondents allows us to test the validity
of the claim that the availability of resources might determine differences
in participation behavior (Sigel 1996; Verba, Schlozman, and
2 WOMEN & POLITICS
Brady 1995). We can assume that for fourteen-year-old adolescents, there
is not yet a systematic difference with regard to the availability of resources
such as time, money, cognitive skills, and so on. If differences
in resources are the fundamental barriers to adult women’s participation,
as is often suggested, then adolescents, who presumably have
smaller resource gaps between gender groups, should have more equal
political engagement levels. Therefore, if we do not find any gender differences
in anticipated political participation at age fourteen, this strengthens
explanations that rely on resource arguments to explain gender
differences in political participation levels.1
On the other hand, if we would find gender differences with regard to
political participation among fourteen-year-olds, the theoretical consequences
to be drawn are less clear. Such a finding would not necessarily
invalidate the resource explanation since we can still argue that even
young girls anticipate their future gender roles, within which they will
have fewer resources at their disposal to devote to politics. In addition, it
seems likely that a gendered socialization has already affected gender
roles in earlier ages through media, school, and peer influences, which
also affects intentions of political participation (Thorne 1993). Nevertheless,
the finding of significant gender differences at the age of fourteen
would imply that research should not be limited to the availability
of resources, but that it should also take into account cultural or socialization
explanations. More specifically, in this scenario more attention
should be paid to the way societies transmit gender roles to new cohorts.
An exploration of the political expectations held by fourteen-year-old
girls and boys, therefore, is interesting not just in and of itself, but also
because it can shed new light on the general study of gender and political
participation.
The inclusion of young people in the study of gender and political
participation is therefore highly relevant, both on theoretical and empirical
grounds. In this article we rely on a survey that was conducted in
1999 among 2,811 eighth-graders across the United States, and can be
considered as representative for this age group (NCES 2001). Since
fourteen-year-olds do not yet have the right to vote and they cannot yet
join political parties, most of the relevant questions in this survey deal
with the nature of political behavior respondents envision for themselves
once they become enfranchised. Earlier research has shown that
this mode of prospective questioning is highly informative about the
likelihood of future political participation (Torney-Purta et al. 2001).
In this regard, it is equally important not to limit this study to a purely
quantitative analysis. The question is not only whether girls intend to be
Marc Hooghe and Dietlind Stolle 3
more or less active than boys; it has been shown that, among adults,
women and men do not differ just in the level of participation, but also
with regard to the kinds of activities they prefer (Lowndes 2000; Stolle
and Micheletti, forthcoming). Women have been shown to engage more
in small-scale, less formal, and caring forms of activity, whereas men
seem to prefer formal, politicized, and hierarchical organizations (Eliasoph
1998; Katzenstein 1998). Here too, the question is whether these
gendered differences exist already at age fourteen, or if they emerge only
later on in the life-cycle.
In this article, we first offer a brief review of the available literature
on gender and participation before moving on to the presentation of our
dataset. Subsequently, we examine the forms and level of political behavior
that girls and boys anticipate for themselves in the future, and ascertain
the factors responsible for their views. In our conclusion, we
argue that participation research should pay more attention to political
acts preferred by women, and to the way adolescent girls and boys anticipate
gender role expectations.
LITERATURE
The gender gap with respect to political participation and civic engagement
is well established; indeed, this difference can be considered
as one of the most stable findings in participation research (Sapiro 1983;
Conway 2000). The gender gap holds for both conventional and unconventional
forms of participation (Barnes and Kaase 1979; Verba, Nie,
and Kim 1978), while it also has been found in various subgroups of the
population (Burns, Schlozman, and Verba 2001).
However, there is little consensus about how these gender differences
can be explained. We will not develop a lengthy review of the literature
here, since the research findings on gender and political participation
are expertly reviewed and summarized in a number of recent
publications (Burns 2002; Burns, Schlozman, and Verba 2001; Carroll
2003; Inglehart and Norris 2003). For a clear understanding of our data
analysis, however, it is necessary to provide the reader with a brief summary
of the various factors that might be responsible for the lower participation
levels of women, at least in most societies, and with regard to
some forms of participation.
In the 1970s, the distinction between explanations based on apathy
and inhibition offered the main paradigm for the study of gender differences
in participation (Ackelsberg and Diamond 1987; Verba, Nie, and
4 WOMEN & POLITICS
Kim 1978). While the apathy thesis held that women simply participate
less intensively because of an innately reduced interest in politics, the
inhibition thesis assumes that women “care about politics but are inhibited
from participating because of external restraints or self-restraints”
(Verba, Nie, and Kim 1978: 237). These inhibitions can be both external
(such as rules barring women from the right to vote or to participate
in politics), or internal (such as the interiorization of gender roles that
limit women’s access to the public sphere).
Since the 1970s, feminist scholars have been building mainly on the
inhibition thesis, highlighting the fact that private inequalities (with regard
to household division of labor and power) have a strong effect on
the opportunities available to women wishing to engage in political action:
“women are prevented from participating in public life because of
the way their private lives are run. The division of labor between women
and men constitutes for most women a double burden of work”
(Phillips 1991: 96). Other authors claim that political institutions inevitably
operate in a gender-biased manner, as elites proclaim allegedly
neutral rules and evaluation criteria that systemically downplay the role
played by women (Young 1990).
More recent research, however, indicates that it would be erroneous
to pinpoint the observed gender difference to just one specific cause–
rather, a subtle interplay of various elements seems to be at work. Burns
(2002) offers four possible elements to explain the gender gap with regard
to political activity. First, women tend to have fewer civic skills,
e.g., with regard to speaking in public, writing texts and leaflets or chairing
meetings (Verba, Schlozman, and Brady 1995). Enduring segregation
of the job market means that fewer women hold professional positions
that would allow them to cultivate this kind of civic skills. Second,
family life tends to reduce the time women have at their disposal to engage
in civic action. In this respect, not just the actual division of labor
within the family can have an effect, but also the way spouses interact
and share gender role expectations (Hochschild 1989; Schlozman, Burns,
and Verba 1994). Third, childrearing responsibilities might have a detrimental
effect on women’s participation, most notably when children
are very young and require almost constant attention and care. A fourth
explanation focuses on the way gender roles limit the options available
to women to engage in various forms of political action. These gender
roles are at play both at the level of the individual (if they are interiorized)
and on the level of organizations that are portrayed as being less
open to female participation.
Marc Hooghe and Dietlind Stolle 5
In the Political Activism study, a massive participation project conducted
by Verba and associates in the early 1990s, not all of these hypotheses
could be confirmed empirically. Burns, Schlozman, and Verba
(2001: 359) do not find any support for either the child-rearing or the
leisure time hypotheses. Inequalities with regard to family life and differences
in socioeconomic resources because of job inequality, on the
other hand, were proven to be significant explanatory variables. In their
conclusion, Burns, Schlozman, and Verba stress the role job inequalities
play: “when other relevant variables are taken into account, men are
more likely than women to get the kinds of jobs that develop civic skills
and to gain positions of lay leadership in their churches–with potential
consequences for their portfolio of participatory resources” (2001:
360). This study also demonstrates that, because media attention is biased
towards male politicians and decision makers, women’s interest in
politics and their intention to participate in the political process is muted.
Thus far we have treated political participation in a rather general
manner, lumping together various forms of participation. It is important
to acknowledge, however, that differences between female and male
participation patterns and preferences are not just quantitative but also
distinctly qualitative. Men, in other words, tend to prefer other forms of
participation than women (Ackelsberg 2003; Ferree and Martin 1995;
Lowndes 2000). In general, women favor smaller-scale and less conflict-oriented
forms of engagement (Eliasoph 1998), with fewer formal
institutions and hierarchies (Arnold 1995). Women tend to choose
forms of political involvement that connect politics with their daily
lives and needs more than men do. In a number of instances, women’s
participation is also concentrated in gender-segregated networks within
larger institutions, a phenomenon that is hardly captured in survey research
on participation (Katzenstein 1998). In other words, instead of
making the general claim that women participate less than men, a distinction
should be made according to specific forms of engagement.
While gender differences tend to persist with regard to campaigning
and membership, the gender gap in voter turnout has been reversed, with
women voting more often than men at least in some countries and some
groups of the population (Conway, Steuernagel, and Ahern 1997). As a
result, it can be estimated that during the 1997 general election in Britain,
approximately two million more women turned out to vote than
men (Evans and Norris 1999). With regard to some policy issues there
are also clear differences, as women tend to pay more attention to issues
like education, child care, or abortion rights and often hold different positions
on the military, poverty, and the use of firearms (CAWP 1997).
6 WOMEN & POLITICS
While some earlier studies demonstrated gender differences with regard
to unconventional or protest activities (Barnes and Kaase 1979), in
more recent studies this gender gap seems to have dissipated, as women
are now equally active in these forms compared to men (Norris 2002).
It is self-evident that this brief review of the literature cannot offer a
full summary of the research findings on gender and political participation
(see Inglehart and Norris 2003). It is important to remember, however,
that researchhas shown that gender differences have been persistent,
especially with regard to more formal forms of political participation.
Furthermore, there is no single “magic bullet” explanation for gender
inequalities with regard to political participation. Socioeconomic and
structural inequalities, bias with regard to access, differential mobilization
patterns, and cultural variables all seem to play a role.
However, recently, the focus has been sharpened on the importance
of various resources for women to participate in politics equally. In this
context, the study of young adolescents is extremely relevant. Various
explanations that are often invoked to explain the lower level of female
participation cannot have a direct impact on fourteen-year-olds. At this
age, differences in resources, especially with regard to income, job position,
work related skills or household responsibilities have yet to come
into play.2 The experiences of children and marriage can also be safely
ruled out at this age. Young adolescents, therefore, offer us a very interesting
testing ground; if gender differences can be detected at this age, a
number of the routine “culprits” for the gender gap can be eliminated,
pointing strongly into the possibility that cultural and socialization explanations
might be at work. If these differences cannot be detected, this
strengthens the case for the resource explanations.
DATA AND METHODS
Our effort to ascertain whether gender differences in repertoires of
political participation are already present at age fourteen is based on the
secondary analysis of a survey conducted among 2,811 eighth graders
in the United States. This study was part of a larger International Association
for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) sponsored
research effort with surveys being conducted in 28 countries (TorneyPurta
et al. 2001). IEA is devoted to the comparative study of the effectiveness
and the performance of education and school systems, and in
general, IEA studies enjoy a good reputation in the field of education
evaluation research. Thus far, however, only the American data file has
Marc Hooghe and Dietlind Stolle 7
been released for secondary analysis, while the data for the other 27
countries should be released in the near future (NCES 2002). In the
United States, the survey was conducted among eighth graders in 124
schools across the country. These schools were selected with attention
to geographical diversity, number of pupils, public or private character,
and the ethnic composition of the student body. In the schools, 2,811
pupils actually participated and delivered a full questionnaire. Of these
pupils 1,392 were girls, 1,375 were boys and 44 did not report any gender.
The sample contained 15 percent Hispanics, 5 percent Native
Americans, 6 percent Asians, 18 percent African Americans and 64 percent
whites. A complete technical report about sampling procedures and
characteristics of the test population can be found in Ogle (2002). The
primary purpose of this survey was to assess the effectiveness of various
civic education efforts in schools. The questionnaire therefore is focused
on school-related variables, while other possible determinants of
civic attitudes and behaviors receive less attention. Nevertheless, this
dataset contains sufficient information to test a number of assumptions
in the current literature on political participation.
At first sight, eighth graders seem an unlikely group to test political
participation theories. It is indeed plausible that youngsters at this age
have not formulated meaningful political opinions; here too, the proof
of the pudding is in the eating. Our results will determine whether fourteen-year-olds
reply randomly to political questions, or whether clear
patterns emerge indicating that “tomorrow’s citizens” are already quite
aware of the possibilities and the likelihood of their future political engagement.
Based on the available literature on youth socialization we
expect that young people already know what they perceive as unfair in
society; moreover, we also expect that they have developed ideas about
whether they are able to bring about change in social arrangements, and,
if so, how they will pursue this goal. To put this in terms of development
psychology, they already have some conception of what their future
role in society will be (Youniss 1982). Longitudinal research, furthermore,
suggests that experiences of socialization at a young age, such as
participation in youth associations or certain forms of civic education,
can have a lasting impact on adult political ideas and behavior patterns
(Hooghe and Stolle 2003; Hooghe, Stolle and Stouthuysen 2004; Yates
and Youniss 1999). We therefore assume that the political conceptions
and expectations of fourteen-year-olds can be studied in a meaningful
and informative way. We test this proposition with our data.
8 WOMEN & POLITICS
FUTURE POLITICAL PARTICIPATION
In this analysis, we are mainly interested in the kind of political and
civic engagement that fourteen-year-olds envision for themselves when
they become adults. In the survey, pupils were offered a list of 12 forms
of engagement, and for each form they could indicate how likely it was
that they would engage in it. For activities linked to the electoral process,
the question was phrased as the likelihood to engage once “you are
an adult.” For the other activities, the question referred to “the next few
years.” For each of these activities, the respondents were offered four
answering categories, ranging from “I will certainly not do this” to “I
will certainly do this.” The results of this question are represented in Table
1.
The results in Table 1 show that for seven activities girls outnumber
boys, as they indicate a higher inclination to participate in this kind of
action. While girls on average report 4.55 acts, boys mention on average
4.00 acts. This finding is interesting because it shows that girls at least
anticipate that they will participate in politics more than boys do, at least
within the framework of the proposed options of involvement. And yet
the adult findings show a reversed effect: in the Political Activism
Study, women reported they had engaged in 1.96 political acts on average,
whereas for men this number was 2.27 (Burns, Schlozman, and
Verba 2001: 1).
The difference between these two findings cannot be easily explained,
but four scenarios stand out. To start with, the Activism study is based
on reported behavior, while the IEA study probes intentions to participate.
It might be that girls are more eager to appear to conform to the image
of concerned citizens, an image widely promoted in schools in
general and more specifically in civics classes. This would imply that
among girls the distance between intention and behavior is larger than
among boys, which by itself would be an interesting finding. Second,
our measurement scale incorporates a larger diversity of engagement
indicators, including various volunteering and campaign activities. In
the Political Activism study, an eight item measurement scale was used
that focused more strongly on electoral activities; this turns out to be
one of the major exceptions in the data noted above, as fourteen-yearold
girls score lower than boys. This would imply that the measurement
scales that are used most often in this kind of research are biased in favor
of activities that are apparently preferred by men. A third possible
explanation might be that we are indeed witnessing the gradual emergence
of gender differences during the transition from youth to adulthood.
At the age of fourteen, girls are at least just as strongly interested
Marc Hooghe and Dietlind Stolle 9
in civic engagement as boys. Ten years later, however, the roles would
be reversed and women do not engage in as many political acts as they
had originally planned. This explanation, of course, is compatible with
the previously discussed resource theory and also with the thesis that focuses
on women’s family responsibilities as a source of gender differences.
Over the following decades, most of the girls interviewed in this
survey will enter a family relationship and the labor market, which might
lead them to face obstacles when transforming their intention to participate
into real participation. A fourth explanation might be that the girls
interviewed in 1999 belong to a generation that has already overcome
the main gender gaps in participation, whereas these differences are still
persistent in the current adult population. Only future research can show
which of the four scenarios is at work here. The overall point, though, is
that in terms of frequency of intended participation, we do not find the
typical gender differences exhibited among adults.
DIMENSIONS OF PARTICIPATION
Thus far we have only discussed the differences between girls and
boys with regard to their anticipated level of participation; now, we turn
10 WOMEN & POLITICS
TABLE 1. Anticipation of Future Political Behavior
Likelihood of future behavior All Girls Boys
rank
Will vote in national elections 1 79.2 83.8 75.0
Will collect information on
candidates in elections
2 74.5 79.1 70.1
Will volunteer 3 65.9 78.6 52.8
Will collect money 4 52.2 60.5 43.3
Will collect signatures 5 43.5 48.2 38.5
Will protest peacefully 6 33.9 35.8 31.7
Will join political party 7 25.7 25.2 26.2
Will write to newspaper 8 24.9 28.0 21.5
Will be candidate for office 9 15.9 14.5 16.9
Will paint slogans 10 13.5 8.3 19.0
Will occupy buildings 11 12.9 10.0 15.6
Will block traffic 12 11.6 7.1 16.3
Activities mentioned 4.26 4.55 4.00
Entries in columns 3-5 are percentages of those who mentioned these activities as something they
would do in the near future or as an adult (probably or certainly do this). Source: IEA study, USA
1999. Percentages are weighted by population weights.
to differences in the kinds of activity they prefer. This distinction is
most pronounced with respect to volunteering, where the number of respondents
willing to engage in this form of action is 25 percent higher
among girls than it is among boys. However, also with regard to voting
and collecting money and signatures, girls mention they would be more
involved. The five activities where the boys score higher, however, are
rather telling; boys indicate more often the wish to become party members
and/or seek office, and they are also overwhelmingly interested in
radical or even violent forms of participation.
It is striking to observe that girls intend to engage in various forms of
engagement and activism, but less so in political parties, or in running
for office. This is a relevant finding since a lot of the research on political
participation focuses almost exclusively on this category of election-related
participatory acts. Yet participation in the electoral arena
represents one of the few categories where women (and girls) are less
represented (Milbrath and Goel 1977). Given our results, the gender gap
in electoral and party participation should not be generalized toward the
entire spectrum of participation acts. In fact, our findings suggest that
the expansion of the definition of political participation beyond strictly
electoral acts closes much of the gender gap, at least at age fourteen.
Second, the gap with regard to running for office is small, but it could
have dramatic consequences. Earlier research has shown that women
are more motivated to participate in election campaigns if one of the
leading candidates is also a woman. In addition, they pay more attention
to political news if female politicians are running for office (Burns,
Schlozman, and Brady 2001; Hansen 1997). The fact that even fourteenyear-old
girls already seem to refrain from this specific kind of electoral
activity, therefore, could imply that in the future too there will still be a
relative shortage of female role models as successful politicians.
The percentage of boys indicating that they want to participate in
some form of radical political action is almost twice as high as the percentage
among girls. Typical activities here include spraying slogans or
blocking traffic. It is clear that girls are less attracted to these forms of
confrontational and even violent participation. Perhaps gender role expectations
strengthen the perception that this kind of physical activity is
predominantly male-oriented. We know that even from an early age,
boys are more prone to engage in violent action and dominant behavior
than girls are (Sidanius and Pratto 1999; Whiting and Edwards 1988).
This finding could also reflect the fact that girls and perhaps women
generally prefer less adversarial political action. Our findings also reflect
the results from the Barnes and Kaase (1979) study, which deMarc
Hooghe and Dietlind Stolle 11
picted a large difference between the participation of women and men in
these unconventional forms of political action. They are equally consistent
with the findings from the 2001 World Values Survey, which
showed that men have engaged in confrontational political action more
often than women (Inglehart and Norris 2003). It seems as if girls are
more eager to participate in socially accepted forms of civic engagement,
while boys additionally employ acts that are generally not encouraged
among young adults.
A factor analysis revealed in Table 2 supports the assertion that these
various acts of participation tap three distinct dimensions of participation
and engagement (Torney-Purta et al. 2001). The most obvious factor
reflects the radical action repertoire, including confrontational or
even illegal acts. The second factor encompasses conventional electoral
participation, with items such as voting or joining a political party. A
third factor depicts volunteering and social movement-related activities,
like collecting money and signatures, or other forms of volunteering.
It is important to note here that these three dimensions are found
among the boys as well as the girls, with the major exception that among
boys, voting loads only poorly on the conventional factor.
EXPLAINING THE INTENTION TO PARTICIPATE
Given the results of the factor analysis, it is self-evident that we should
not just try to explain the overall level of anticipated future behavior. It
is equally important to ascertain whether girls and boys differ with regard
to the kind of political engagement they envision. This implies that
for the next step in our analysis, three different dependent variables will
be used. Three sum scales (based on the results of the factor analysis)
will be employed distinguishing whether respondents say they are likely
to engage in conventional, radical or social movement forms of activ-
ism.
Our main purpose here is to construct a multivariate model that allows
us to ascertain whether or not gender differences are present with respect
to various forms of participation, even when taking into account a
number of control variables that are likely to determine participation behavior.
We rely on independent variables from the literature on political
participation and youth political socialization (for a review see Galston
2001; Jennings 2002; Yates and Youniss 1999). Given that we examine
secondary data collected for other purposes, we are forced to use the
variables employed in the original study. Furthermore, it should be re-
12 WOMEN & POLITICS
TABLE 2. Dimensions of Anticipated Political Behavior
Likelihood of future behavior Factors
I radical – II new social movement – III conventional
All Girls Boys
I II III I II III I II III
Will vote in national elections .525 .647 .383
Will collect information on
candidates in elections
.598 .643 .533
Will volunteer .761 .745 .766
Will collect money .799 .786 .805
Will collect signatures .742 .703 .734
Will protest peacefully .617 .558 .643
Will join political party .811 .772 .827
Will write to newspaper .719 .670 .759
Will be candidate for office .659 .543 .739
Will spray slogans .849 .850 .854
Will occupy buildings .857 .848 .850
Will block traffic .889 .884 .885
Eigenvalue (Rotation Sum
of Squares)
2.7 2.4 2.4 2.7 2.4 2.2 2.7 2.6 2.4
Explained variance 22.6 20.5 20.3 22.4 20.0 18.6 22.6 21.5 20.0
Factor loadings from a Factor analysis (Principal component) with Varimax rotation.
13
membered that this is a rather homogeneous sample, and consequently a
number of possible variables could not be used. Almost all respondents
are fourteen years old, with a mean age of 14.40 (and a standard deviation
of 0.64), and all are pupils in the eighth grade. No information on
religion was available, as it was considered unethical to ask such questions
of juveniles in a school context. Information on ethnic background,
on the other hand, is available and depicts an almost two-thirds majority
of white pupils in the sample. It is a robust finding in participation research
that ethnic minorities participate less intensively than members
of the dominant group in society (Schlozman 2002; Verba, Schlozman,
and Brady 1995).
In general, education can be considered one of the most important determinants
of participation levels, as almost every study conducted on
this subject has demonstrated that highly educated citizens participate
more intensively than people with less educational credentials (Nie,
Junn, and Stehlik-Barry 1996). However, little is known about what exactly
in the education process helps to instill civic responsibility and
commitment. Research conducted on civic education has documented
that its completion increases the likelihood that pupils will participate in
politics later on; the extensiveness of civic education can play an especially
important role in this respect (Niemi and Junn 1998). Therefore,
we included a sum scale of the number of topics that were discussed in
civic education classes.3 Other studies on the effects of schooling, however,
claim that not just the formal curriculum is important, but also the
informal curriculum: are pupils, in other words, encouraged to speak out
and to discuss among themselvesand with their teachers? Torney, Oppenheim,
and Farnen (1975) have labeled this an “open classroom climate,”
and this too was included in the survey in the form of questions on the
perceived openness of schools and classroom settings.
The length of education is a typical measure of the availability of educational
resources at the adult level; evidently, though, there is no variation
yet in this respect in a sample of fourteen-year-olds. However,
previous research has shown that the inquiring of adolescents as to the
number of years they expect to stay in school has a strong predictive
value (Torney-Purta 2001). Those who feel happy at school and experience
less trouble following courses on average see a longer educational
future ahead of them. Another variable probing into their relation with
school asks about the number of school days they missed last year. While
these absences might be due to various idiosyncratic reasons, in general
longer and more frequent absences point toward a more detached attitude
toward the school; this, in turn, has been shown to have a negative
14 WOMEN & POLITICS
effect on political interest and willingness to engage in political life
(John, Halpern, and Morris 2002).
Not just the school environment, however, has an effect on the way
young people think about politics (Adler and Adler 1986; Youniss, McLellan,
and Yates 1997). Those who are already active in youth associations
and volunteering will be more likely to participate later on in their
lives (Hooghe 2003). Therefore, we also included the number of associations
that respondents are actively engaged in as an independent variable.
We would like to have included more information about the socioeconomic
status of the parents of the pupils, since we can safely assume
this will have an impact on the participation aspirations of these youngsters
(Jennings and Niemi 1981). Given the emphasis on resources as a
source of explanation, it is also important to know whether there are any
systematic differences in the resources available at the children’s home.
This kind of information, however, could not be obtained by means of a
youth survey, for methodological and ethical reasons, and therefore the
research team responsible for the IEA survey decided to settle for a
proxy variable: an estimation of the number of books at home. It is a very
reasonable and well-tested assumption that the number of books reflects
the education level and income of the parents (Torney-Purta et al. 2001).
In Table 3 we present regression results explaining the three types of
intended participation using WesVar (http://www.westat.com/wesvar).
We use a linear regression model, with sample weights applied. The
complex sampling design for the IEA survey requires special estimation
techniques. The first stage sampling is at the school level with the sampling
of two schools in each primary sampling unit (PSU). The second
stage involves probability selection of the students within a school. When
the data are from complex samples, modifications of the standard estimation
methods must be employed to reflect the effects of clustering,
stratification, or other features of the sample design (Steenbergen and
Jones 2002).The modelling in WesVar accomplishes this by applying
jackknife repeated replication (JRR) techniques to estimate the sampling
errors of the model parameters.
The most striking feature of the regression analysis depicted in Table
3 is that the various forms of participation are explained very differently.
Clearly, radical political acts stand out with explanatory variables
often indicating reverse effects. At the individual level, for example, the
number of years one expects to be in the education process positively
correlates with conventional acts, but it is the other way around with
radical acts. Children who belong to associations are also disproportionately
anticipating some form of participation in conventional and
Marc Hooghe and Dietlind Stolle 15
movement acts, but the membership does not influence the anticipation
of radical acts whatsoever.
Looking at school-related factors, one observes that while the number
of topics discussed in civics classes has a strong positive effect on
conventional and social movement participation, it has a negative effect
on radical participation. Similarly, the open classroom climate is an important
facilitative factor for conventional and social movement related
political acts, but the perception of a closed classroom climate seems to
be fostering the willingness to engage in radical acts. This pattern can be
seen as a confirmation of our initial assumption that one should be careful
about making sweeping statements about overall participation levels,
without going into specific kinds of participation.
Although at first we found that girls and boys do not exhibit the typical
gender gap with the political acts they intend, it is clear that girls are
more likely to engage in various forms of social movement related activities,
and this relation holds even after including all the control variables.
On the other hand, girls are less likely to engage in radical
political actions. The different results when parceling out distinct political
action repertoires show that it is imperative in future research on political
participation to distinguish between various forms of participation.
Only such an analysis can reveal that certain participation acts are apparently
preferred by women and girls–perhaps these are repertoires
that warrant closer attention by political scientists–whereas others are
disproportionately rejected.
It is obvious that at this age, gender roles and expectations figure
strongly in one’s determination of the participation profile girls and
boys envision for themselves. Girls tend to mention activities that are
considered socially beneficial; for boys, on the other hand, adversarial
(and sometimes even illegal) forms of action are more appealing. Given
what we know about the way girls and boys at a young age interact with
the school environment, it is very likely that this is more than just a superficial
conformation process, but rather that it reflects interiorized
gender roles. At this age, gender differences with regard to educational
attainment are already clearly present, and they can largely be explained
by the fact that girls tend to behave in a more conformist, non-adversarial,
and school-oriented fashion, while a greater proportion of the
boys rebel against the school environment, eventually even leading to
their dropping out entirely (Gorard, Rees, and Salisbury 2001). That a
certain number of boys mention radical participation acts fits into this
pattern. The results of the analysis show that these radical acts are in no
way related to what they learn at school, while other political acts are
16 WOMEN & POLITICS
TABLE 3. Explaining Participation Expectations
Conventional
B (SE B) ␤
Radical
B (SE B) ␤
Social Movement
B (SE B) ␤
Cte. .06
(.03)
.43
(.04)
.27
(.03)
Gender (0 = male, 1 = female) .00
(.008)
.01 Ϫ.08
(.012)
Ϫ.17*** .05
(.009)
fourteen***
Ethnicity/Race
- Black
- Ethnic Minorities (†)
Ϫ.01
(.009)
Ϫ.01
(.009)
Ϫ.02
Ϫ.01
.05
(.016)
.03
(.013)
.06**
.05*
.04
(.012)
.04
(.008)
.07***
.07***
Topics in Civic Education .09
(.010)
.25*** Ϫ.03
(.012)
Ϫ.07** .01
(.010)
.25***
Open Classroom Climate .12
(.024)
.13*** Ϫ.10
(.032)
Ϫ.08** .09
(.028)
.09**
Years of Education Ahead .02
(.004)
.10*** Ϫ.03
(.005)
Ϫ.12*** .010
(.004)
.05
Days Absent from School Ϫ.01
(.005)
Ϫ.04 .03
(.006)
.13*** Ϫ.00
(.006)
Ϫ.02
Number of Associations .01
(.001)
.16*** .00
(.002)
.01 .02
(.002)
.23***
Books at Home .02
(.003)
.13*** .00
(.005)
.01 .00
(.004)
.02
r2
.22 .11 .24
n 2,189 2,188 2,187
Entries are unstandardized coefficients, standard errors, and standardized coefficients from an ordinary least squares regression, using a WesVar
design. †: Includes Hispanic, Asian, Pacific Islander and Native American.
*** = p < .001; **< p < .01; *< .05
17
positively related with the presence of an open classroom climate, the
number of topics discussed in civic education classes, and the number
of expected years of further education. An even more obvious indication
of the notion that the boys who prefer radical actions are not necessarily
school-oriented is the fact that they miss significantly more
school days. Radical action, in a way, is very much a manifestation of
“bad boy” behavior, in that it is not something that is encouraged or
stimulated by school institutions. Civic education apparently is more
successful in promoting the “good,” “kind,” and to some extent non-adversarial
and non-threatening forms of participation (John, Halpern,
and Morris 2002).
CONCLUSION
Our initial question for this study was to examine whether the gender
differences that are typically found in research on adult political participation
are already present among young people. Research among adolescents
can shed new light on the oft-invoked explanation that women
have fewer resources available to engage in public and political life
(Burns, Schlozman, and Verba 2001).
The answer to this question is inevitably twofold. With regard to the
level of participation, a first-cut test reveals that there is no difference
between girls and boys. In fact, girls mention more acts than boys. When
speculating on what this finding means for the study of adult participation,
some caution is in order. To start with, there is a measurement
problem: the fact that girls even outperform boys in this study might be
due to the fact that the IEA study included a substantial number of social
movement related forms of action. As far as we know, this questionnaire
has never been used for research among adults, and so we cannot
be sure that similar levels of engagement might be provoked by asking
adults about a wider variety of political acts. Second, there is the question
whether this result will last: implicitly, we compare adult women
and young girls at the same moment of time. What we really want to
know, of course, is how the political action repertoire of these girls will
develop over time; what we would ideally want to know is how these
young women will participate ten years from now. It is possible that by
then gender differences among adults indeed will have disappeared, although
the fact that these differences are remarkably consistent in any
research effort from the 1950s on does not lead to a strong feeling of optimism
on this front.
18 WOMEN & POLITICS
Despite these two caveats, our finding offers new insights on how we
can explain the observed differences in the participation level of women
and men. At an age where there are most likely no strong gender differences
with regard to the availability of resources, girls and boys intend
to participate equally. In adulthood, however, these differences do become
apparent, and this strengthens the case for the resources-explanation
of the gender gap. Therefore, the basic question in research on
women and political participation should not be: “Why do women participate
less?” but rather “Why do adult women stop doing the things
they intended to do when they were adolescent girls?” Sigel (1996) invokes
a process of “accommodation,” where girls accommodate and
adapt to gender roles when they mature into adulthood, and this kind of
theoretical insight is a good starting point if we want to study what exactly
changes between the ages of fourteen and, let us say, twenty-four.
Apparently, women change their political and social ambitions once
they engage themselves in relations and enter the job market, where they
are confronted with segregation and gender inequalities.
It is equally important, however, to pay more attention to the kind of
participatory acts favored by each gender. While girls and boys do not
differ significantly with regard to the level of anticipated participation,
they do intend to engage in different forms of political action. It is quite
telling to observe that most of the current research on political participation
tends to focus on exactly those forms of participation where boys
excel. On one side there is an ongoing stream of electoral and party-related
participation research, and on the other side radical forms of engagement
and activism are being studied as unconventional political
acts. The activities preferred by girls, to the contrary, tend to be neglected
in participation research, or they are sometimes dismissed as not
being strictly political. An unbiased and meaningful study of participation
patterns, therefore, should include social movement-oriented forms
of activism, such as volunteering or collecting signatures and money for
political or social purposes, and give them equal weighting compared to
electoral or radical participation acts.
AUTHOR NOTE
The authors would like to thank M. Kent Jennings and Judith Torney-Purta for their
constructive comments on an earlier draft of this article, as well as Shep Roey from
Weststat for help with the estimation in WesVar.
Both authors contributed equally to this article.
Marc Hooghe and Dietlind Stolle 19
NOTES
1. An alternative explanation for the potential lack of gender differences could be that
the cohort of fourteen-year-olds in 1999 (born in 1985) exhibits fewer gender differences
than all of their predecessors. Given the remarkable persistence of the gender gap
in political behavior, not only this is rather unlikely, but it is also an argument that we
can test only within a few decades time, when this cohort will have progressed into
middle age.
2. The only exception could be that girls at this age are expected to contribute more to
household chores than their male counterparts are. The survey unfortunately did not include
any information on this topic. In general, however, it can be expected that household
requirements at this age will remain rather limited, and will impose a limited time
burden, compared to the time adults spend on household and child rearing responsibilities.
A time budget study conducted in Belgium showed that sixteen-year-old girls on
average report 3.5 hours of household work a week, while boys report 3.0 hours. This
difference, however, is negligible compared to the household workload of people in
their twenties that have left the home of their parents: 20 hours per week for women and
6 hours per week for men (Koelet 2002). At this moment, we do not know, however,
whether these Belgian findings can be generalized to US teenagers.
3. We rely on the pupil’s report about the number of topics discussed, so it could be
that in reality, various other topics were discussed too, but that the pupil failed to remember
this. The same caveat holds for the variable on an open classroom climate, but
in this respect it that can be argued that if pupils themselves perceive the classroom climate
as not being “open,” there certainly is a problem, no matter the intentions of the
teacher and the school.
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