Erik Wengström
Professor, Director of Doctoral studies, Department of Economics
Personality Traits and the Gender Gap in Ideology
Author
Editor
- Maria Gallego
- Norman Schofield
Summary, in English
What explains the gender gap in ideology, i.e. the observation that women tend to be more leftist than men? We provide new evidence showing that personality traits play a key role. Using a novel high-quality data set, we show that the mediating (i.e. indirect) effects of gender operating through personality traits by far dominate the direct effects of gender. They also dominate other potential differences between the sexes like income or education as explanatory factors. Our findings suggest that women tend to be more leftist than men mainly because they have different personalities, which, in turn, shape their expressed ideology. Taking such mediating effects of personality traits into account explains over three quarters of the observed gender gap in general ideological preferences.
Department/s
- Department of Economics
Publishing year
2016
Language
English
Pages
153-185
Publication/Series
Studies in Political Economy
Document type
Book chapter
Publisher
Springer
Topic
- Gender Studies
- Economics
Status
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISSN: 2364-5903
- ISBN: 978-3-319-40118-8
- ISBN: 978-3-319-40116-4