More stress, less voice? The gender gap in political participation during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Initial fears of a standstill in political participation during the COVID-19 pandemic have not come true. Nevertheless, the voices heard in politics may have changed in such a radically altered social and political context. Specifically, the current article examines whether the gender gap in political participation has widened during the pandemic, reinforcing the gendered impact of the pandemic and state measures to cope with it. To empirically assess the development and drivers of the gender gap in political participation, we rely on original survey data for Germany collected in autumn 2020 and spring 2021. Based on retrospective questions about pre-pandemic behaviour and a within-pandemic panel, our results indicate three points: (1) the COVID-19 crisis has slightly increased the gender gap in participation; (2) COVID-19-related burdens (such as increasing care obligations) have not restrained, but fostered, participation; and (3) this mobilising effect is, however, stronger among men than women.

Widening the gap of political inequality? The effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on political engagement

“…Third, the gap in political engagement across income and education groups tends to enlarge with the advent of COVID-19 (which is in line with results achieved for the gender gap; see Burciu and Hutter, 2023). In particular, having been negatively impacted by the pandemic, both in terms of health and economy, it had a greater impact on the lowest income and education groups, discouraging engagement but also, in some cases, increasing engagement among the most privileged.…”

“…Regarding controls, the effect of age is negligible, while that of gender denotes a bias in engagement in favor of men (consistent with prior conclusions of a gender gap in political participation; see e.g., Burciu and Hutter, 2023). Men are about twice as likely to feel politically efficacious and interested in politics.…”

“…Likewise, the COVID-19 pandemic implied the triggering of a whole set of imbalances that (differently) affected individuals, including at the political level (Offe, 2021). At this level, research has mainly focused on how it influenced trust in political institutions (e.g., Kritzinger et al, 2021), turnout (e.g., Fernandez-Navia et al, 2021, regime support (e.g., Amat et al, 2020;Erhardt et al, 2022), political participation in general (Borbàth et al, 2021;Belchior et al, 2022), and collective protest in particular (Kriesi and Oana, 2022), signaling the accentuation of the underlying prior gender gap in participation (e.g., Burciu and Hutter, 2023). The way in which the pandemic affected how individuals engage with politics has received almost no attention.…”