Who is afraid of more women in politics, and why? An analysis of public opinion in 28 European countries
We study how individual and country-level variables interact in affecting political gender attitudes in Europe. Based on data from the 2017 Eurobarometer survey, we show that there are high levels of support for more women in politics and legal measures to achieve gender parity across the EU. In fact, more people, and women in particular, put higher trust in female compared to male political representatives than the other way round. We find that – at the individual level – gender, age and education have significant effects on political gender attitudes. Contrary to theory, however, the effect of gender is not mediated by beliefs about the proper role of women in politics and society. We also do not find support for the contextual effects of masculine culture and the religiosity of society, but we do uncover significant gaps in political gender attitudes between post-communist and other countries, especially for men. This gap is very significant in size and declines only marginally with the age of the respondent. Our study identifies men in post-communist countries as the group least likely to trust female politicians and support gender parity in politics in Europe. These attitudes are at least partly independent from stereotypes about gender roles.