ABSTRACT
Why do women appear less interested in politics than men? This is a question that has puzzled social science for almost three generations, since Maurice Duverger investigated the political role of women for UNESCO in 1955. His fi ndings – that there were few differences in the voting patterns of women and men, but women’s participation in all other aspects of political life was much less than that of men – provided the fi rst evidential basis for examining gender differences in civic engagement and political participation. He went on to explain these differences as emanating from ‘the general structure of society, in the psychological and social environment’:
If the majority of women are little attracted to political careers, it is because everything tends to turn them away from them; if they allow politics to remain essentially a man’s business, it is because everything conduces to this belief, tradition, family life, education, religion and literature.
