Beyond barriers? A quantitative study on the role of political interest in women’s voting behaviour

Abstract

Women remain underrepresented in politics worldwide, including in the Netherlands. In this, previous research often points to socio-cultural barriers, such as traditional gender roles and expectations involved, as major obstacles for women to participate politically. At the same time, there are theories, such as the Civic Voluntarism Model, which argue that individual motivation - in the form of mainly political interest - can contribute in overcoming such barriers. For this reason, I investigated – through the lens of Social Role Theory and the Civic Voluntarism Model - to what extent socio-cultural barriers influence women's voting behaviour and whether political interest might positively moderate this relationship.

This is conducted through the use of European Social Survey (ESS) data, in which a survey with 698 female respondents was analysed with the use of binary logistic regression. This was conducted to analyse the direct and indirect effects of socio-cultural barriers and political interest on voting behaviour.

The findings of my study show that while socio-cultural barriers initially have a negative association with voting, this effect does not become significant once political interest, among other things, is included. In doing so, political interest emerged as a strong, consistent predictor of voting, almost tripling the probability of participation. Yet no moderating effect was found, which means that political interest in this study does not act as a means to overcome socio- cultural barriers. Despite the focus on voting as an important form of political participation, this suggests that motivation is an essential factor in political engagement, but it is not enough for women to overcome barriers. These results underline the importance of not only removing barriers but also fostering women's political motivation to improve democratic representation