Much is said about Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) publics opposing gender equality, often referring to patriarchal Islam. However, nuanced large-scale studies addressing which specific aspects of religiosity affect support for gender equality across the MENA are conspicuously absent. This study develops and tests a gendered agentic socialization framework that proposes that MENA citizens are not only passively socialized by religion but also have agency (within their religiosity). This disaggregates the influence of religiosity, highlights its multifacetedness, and theorizes the moderating roles that gender and sociocognitive empowerment play via gendered processes of agentic dissociations. Using 15 World Values Surveys and multilevel models, our analyses show that most dimensions of religiosity fuel opposition to gender equality. However, the salience of religion in daily life is found to increase women’s support for gender equality and cushion the negative impact of religious service attendance. Also, gender and education moderate the impacts of several religiosity dimensions; for instance, women’s (initially greater) support for gender equality more sharply declines with increased service attendance than men’s. Altogether, this study finds that religious socialization is multifaceted and gendered, and that certain men and women are inclined and equipped to deviate from dominant patriarchal religious interpretations.

We analyzed determinants of women's employment with data for 40,792 women living in 103 districts of 6 Arab countries. We tested a new theoretical framework that addresses the roles of needs, opportunities, and values at multiple levels. At the microlevel (individual, family), socioeconomic factors, care duties, and traditionalism were important; at the macrolevel (district), economic development and societal norms were important. Women's education seemed most influential. Interaction analyses showed that returns on women's education depended on their partner's education and on the economic development, labor market structure, urbanization, and strength of traditional norms in the district in which women live. Our results stress the importance of a comprehensive approach toward women's employment in these countries.

Why do more men than women vote for populist radical-right (PRR) parties? And do more men than women still vote for the PRR? Can attitudes regarding gender and gender equality explain these differences (if they exist)? These are the questions that Spierings and Zaslove explore in this article. They begin with an analysis of men's and women's voting patterns for PRR parties in seven countries, comparing these results with voting for mainstream (left-wing and right-wing) parties. They then examine the relationship between attitudes and votes for the populist radical right, focusing on economic redistribution, immigration, trust in the European Union, law and order, environmental protection, personal freedom and development, support for gender equality, and homosexuality. They conclude that more men than women do indeed support PRR parties, as many studies have previously demonstrated. However, the difference is often overemphasized in the literature, in part since it is examined in isolation and not compared with voting for (centre-right) mainstream parties. Moreover, the most important reasons that voters support PRR parties seem to be the same for men and for women; both vote for the populist radical right because of their opposition to immigration. In general, there are no consistent cross-country patterns regarding gender attitudes explaining differences between men and women. There are some recurring country-specific findings though. Most notably: first, among women, economic positions seem to matter less; and economically more left-wing (and those with anti-immigrant attitudes) women also vote for the PRR in Belgium, France, Norway and Switzerland; and, second, those who hold authoritarian or nativist views in combination with a strong belief that gays and lesbians should be able to 'live their lives as they choose' are disproportionately much more likely to vote for PRR parties in Sweden and Norway. Despite these findings, Spierings and Zaslove argue that the so-called 'gender gap' is often overemphasized. In other words, it appears that populist radical-right parties, with respect to sex and gender, are in many ways simply a more radical version of centreright parties.

Ever since the successful presidential campaign of Barack Obama in 2008, attention has been drawn to the political impact of social media. However, it remains to be seen whether the successful Obama campaign is the exception or the rule. Our research focuses specifically on the impact of social media on preference voting. First it seeks to establish whether candidates make use of social media during election campaigns and whether voters in turn follow politicians. Afterwards it examines to what extent social media make a difference and yield a preference vote bonus. Theoretically, two types of effects are outlined, namely a direct effect of the number of followers a candidate has and a statistical interaction effect whereby a higher number of followers only yields more votes when the candidate actively uses the social media. To carry out our analysis, we make use of a unique dataset that combines data on social media usage and data on the candidates themselves (such as position on the list, being wellknown, exposure to the old media, gender, ethnicity and incumbency). The dataset includes information on all 493 candidates of the 10 parties that received at least one seat in the Dutch 2010 election. It turns out that candidates are eager to use social media, but that relatively few people follow candidates. There is a significant interaction effect of social media usage and the number of followers, but that effect appears to be relatively small.

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