Is There a "Women's Voice" in Politics?

This article, which was first published in Hebrew in IDI's online journal Parliament, investigates participation trends (including voting, protest and other political activity) in the U.S. and other Western countries. It explores trends within the socioeconomic, religious, and educational status of women and relates them to voting outcomes. Surprisingly, the "modern gender gap" that exists within these countries does not exist in Israel: studies show that gender was never significantly correlated with voting preferences in Israeli elections, especially with regards to economic and political issues. This article explores why there is no "women's voice" in Israeli politics, and why Israeli women diverge from women in other democratic countries.

The Women's Voice Worldwide

Introduction

Research in Israel on the issue of gender equality in politics focuses primarily on the representation of women in national and local institutions. These studies demonstrate, time after time, the under-representation of women in the government and Knesset and in top positions in the public and private sectors, with a better but still unsatisfying record in local government. (See article on Milestones in Legislation and Judgements) Very few studies (Yishai, 1997, among them) examine the flip side—the political participation of women in various forms in civil society: their voting patterns and political party membership, interest in politics, involvement in volunteer organizations and new social movements, and public protest activities. The lack of scholarly attention to these areas does not indicate disinterest on the part of researchers. Rather, when gender differences are examined, Israel—unlike the rest of the world—shows no significant differences in voting patterns, for instance, between men and women. Also, surprisingly, women's views on defense and foreign policy issues in Israel are quite similar to men's. On the other hand, the rate of women's participation in activities that demand a greater investment of time and effort, such as political party work or protest actions, is below that of men, as is the case in other democracies as well.

Comparative research indicates that in post-industrial countries, as well as in developing and undeveloped countries, men and women participate in politics in different ways (Inglehart and Norris, 2003).

Voting Patterns: Is There a Gender Gap?

When women were granted the right to vote in the U.S. and most European countries in the early twentieth century, there was some belief—or fear—that a "women's voice" would develop and alter the balance of political power. Gender, however, did not outweigh social class and religion as highly influential variables. Nevertheless, in the period between the Second World War and the 1980s, there was a traditional gender gap in Western Europe and the U.S.: while women and men turned out to the polls in similar numbers, women tended to vote more heavily for conservative parties (right of center). In Italy, Germany, and Britain, for instance, women's support for rightwing parties was 10% greater than for leftwing parties. The reason is that these women held more conservative values and were more religious. In Italy and France, for instance, they were more frequent church-goers, which shaped their electoral preferences since the churches they attended were affiliated with right-of-center parties.

As early as the 1970s, this pattern changed in the U.S. as female voters began leaning leftward (towards the Democratic Party). Patterns were mixed in Europe in the 1980s, with women's voting preferences conservative in some countries and liberal in others. Gradually, the traditional gap disappeared. In the last decade of the twentieth century and the early years of the current century, there were signs of a "modern gender gap" characterized by greater numbers of women voting for leftwing parties. While the gender gap is not large, it is stable. If, at the beginning of the 1970s, women's political stances in Western Europe were to the right of men's, by the mid-1990s, women were voting further left on the spectrum than men, whose positions remained unchanged. One indication of the recent leftward leanings of women is the fact that in 64 out of 70 Western countries (some of them undeveloped), more women than men support economic ideas associated with the left, such as increased government control of the economy, stronger government restrictions on private industry, and maintenance of government-sponsored social benefits.

The change is most apparent among young women. Older women are still more conservative-leaning, while their younger counterparts tend to vote for leftwing parties and adopt their social and economic world views. This is particularly evident in post-industrial societies that have experienced modernization; women's lives there have changed significantly, along with their conceptions of gender roles in society and in their personal lives.

Generally, the left-oriented women are younger, have higher levels of education, and are employed. The women with conservative political preferences tend to be older, less educated, not employed outside the home, lower on the socioeconomic scale, divorced, and religious (in most cases Catholic or Jewish). These characteristics, while typical of societies of every sort, are most prominent in post-industrial countries. We can conclude that as the modernization process expands, this trend will become more pronounced. Countries with a largely traditional religious population (Islamic countries among them), in which women's interest rarely extends beyond everyday matters, are still not part of this trend. Nevertheless, there are some signs of change in the status of women in these societies as well.

Possible Explanations for the "Modern Gender Gap"

• Secularization: In the past, the electoral views of women in Western European countries were shaped primarily by their religious affinities. As these countries become increasingly secularized, the ties to religion are weakening, along with support for the rightwing Christian parties identified with them.
• Changes in the roles of women in the family, the labor market, and education: These changes have altered priorities, particularly among wealthy, educated women, as reflected in trends in women's electoral preferences.
• Growth of the "new politics": Society's traditional dividing lines (class and religion) began to fade with the arrival of the new politics, and new issues rose to the surface, among them environmental quality, women's rights, and quality of life. Interest in these issues sparked a change in values in modern society, particularly among the young, wealthy, and educated. Among the newly adopted values in post-materialistic society are liberty, self-fulfillment, and gender equality. Since leftwing political parties were an expression of this change in values, the transition to adopting post-materialistic values was accompanied by support for leftwing political parties. These parties, which promote the ideas and policies of a welfare state, are more attractive to women who, by virtue of their family roles and socioeconomic status, are the primary recipients of welfare services (childcare and health benefits, for example). Leftwing parties also actively promote gender equality by reserving top-level positions for women and setting quotas for representation by women. Conservative rightwing parties, on the other hand, encourage women to maintain their traditional role as mothers and housewives, oppose affirmative action, and aim for minimal government involvement in the area of welfare.

Other Forms of Political Participation

Classic research on political participation in the 1970s and on came to the definitive conclusion that in every Western democracy gender is a relevant factor in political activity: men are more politically active than women. That conclusion is still valid today, despite the changes that have taken place in the social status of women, and it is evidenced more prominently in non-conventional forms of political participation (such as protest activities) than in conventional forms (such as voting).

Voter Participation Rates

Studies conducted in the 1970s in the U.S. and Western Europe found that women had lower voting rates than men. That gap has been closing, however, since the 1980s, and in some instances, the women's voter turnout has even surpassed that of men.

Data gathered worldwide reveal the following:

• In some countries, there is no gap between men's and women's voter turnout. In Britain, for example, the overall turnout for the Parliamentary elections of 2005 was 61%, with 61% of all women and 62% of all men voting. Sweden has recorded equal voting rates since the 1970s, and in some races women out-voted men to a slight degree—in 1998, nearly 83% of Swedish women voted, as opposed to 81.5% of the men.
• In the 1970s, male voters outnumbered female voters in the U.S. Since 1984, however, this gap has "inverted," and more women have been turning out at the polls. In the 2004 Presidential elections, 60% of American women reported voting, as opposed to 56% of American men. (For more information, visit: http://www.cawp.rutgers.edu/Facts5.html)
• Another country that has reduced its gender gap in voting in recent years is Finland. In 1945, the voting rate for men was 9% higher than for women. The gap began to close in the early 1970s but has not reached the stage of inversion: In 2003, the voting turnout for Finish men was 72%, compared with 68% for women.
• In some Central and South American countries (Chile, Ecuador, and Puerto Rico), a higher rate of women than men vote in elections.
• In India, the voting gap is still considerable, with men far out-voting women. The trend, however, is towards greater participation by women: the voting gap has been narrowing gradually, from 16% in the 1960s, to 10-11% in the '70s and early '80s, to 8-9% in the late '90s.

(For more information, visit: http://www.idea.int/gender/vt.cfm)

One possible explanation for the absence of a gap in voting rates in Western democracies is the minor degree of effort and time required to cast a vote. Likewise, women in these countries participate less than men in the activities that surround elections, such as campaigning, making contacts with public representatives, and joining political organizations.

Party Membership

Men are more prone to join political parties and be active in them, though participation rates vary depending on the nature of the party. The percentage of women is higher in environmental and leftwing parties, and these are the parties that set representation quotas for women in order to encourage their active participation. Men, on the other hand, constitute the majority on the membership roles of professional unions.

Interest in Politics

A public opinion surveys reveal that a larger percentage of men than women reported being interested in politics (by following events in the news, for example) and talking about political issues with family members and friends.

Active Involvement in Volunteer Organizations and New Social Movements

Logic dictates that the growth and development of civil society would increase the influence of women: because they lack the necessary cultural, structural, and personal prerequisitesince, women are more closely tied to their communities and have less access to institutional politics. However, research that explored women's participation in volunteer organizations and new social movements found that the stereotypical gender divisions characterized civil society as well (see Table 1). Women are more active in organizations related to their traditional areas of interest—education, art, religion, welfare, and women's issues. Unexpectedly, women are not more active than men in new social movements concerned with environmental protection and quality of life (though participation rates by gender are quite similar), and men are also the more active members of peace movements (for which there is a 16% gender gap in membership).

Table 1: "Women's" and "Men's" Organizations in Civil Society

Organizations in which men are more active	Organizations in which women are more active	Organizations in which women and men are equally active
Environmental quality and animal rights	Education, culture, and art	Political parties and groups
Human rights (slightly more participation by women)	Religious organizations and churches	Sports
	Volunteer organizations concerned with health, welfare, and assistance to the elderly and disabled	Peace movements
	Women's organizations (87% women vs. 13% men)	Professional unions and associations

Data based on a worldwide survey conducted by Inglehart and Norris, 2003:113

Protest Activities

In the 1970s, it was found that Western European women had lower participation rates than men in protest activities. This gap continued into the next century in all countries: 40% of women, as opposed to 49% of men, reported participating in at least one protest demonstration. The gap is wider in industrial societies (with men 5% more active than women) and pre-industrial societies (with men 8% more active), and is less pronounced in post-industrial societies (where men are 3% more active than women in protest activities). In all societies, the gap increases with age: the younger the age of participants, the smaller the gap between the percentages of men and women (Inglehart and Norris, 2003:117).

Despite the substantial changes in the status of women, they still tend to be less involved than men in political life. While the gap between them is not large, it holds steady. At the moment, men are maintaining their traditional majority membership in political parties and some civil society organizations. The gender gap is narrower, however, in more modern societies and among younger citizens.

Unlike voting rates, which demonstrate significant cross-generational differences and appear to be changing over time, political involvement shows no such trends. Younger women show no greater tendency than their older counterparts towards active political involvement in any form regardless of the type of society in examined—post-industrial, industrial, or pre-industrial.

The Women's Voice in Israel

The situation in Israel is exceptional in that women's voting patterns are no different from men's and there are no apparent gender differences in positions on economic and defense issues. On the other hand, Israeli women resemble their counterparts around the world in their political participation rates and interest in politics, which are both lower than those of men.

Shortly after the establishment of the state, the Israel Institute of Applied Social Research (now the Guttman Center, part of the Israel Democracy Institute) conducted a series of surveys that found no significant differences between women and men in their positions on most national issues, which, at the time, included plans for different educational authorities and limitations on immigration. On other issues, women's views differed somewhat from those of men. With regard to the government's austerity plan, for instance, women's opinions were more negative than men's. With regard to women's rights, there was equal support for recruiting women as soldiers (with about half of all women and men in favor). Overall support for equal rights was high (92%), with women demonstrating slightly more enthusiasm than men for the principle.

Voting Patterns: Why Israel Does Not Have a "Modern Gender Gap"

There is no "women's voice" in Israeli elections. In other words, Israeli women do not differ from Israeli men in their voting preferences. According to Arian (1998), when analyzed statistically, gender was never significantly correlated with voting preferences in Israeli elections. This result held true no matter which portion of the political spectrum was being analyzed, left or right. The variables that have proven to be most significant in determining Israeli voting patterns are degree of religiosity, ethnic origin, and age. In only one instance—in 1996, when there was a direct rather than a party election for prime minister—were voting patterns by gender noticeably different. Women showed more support in that election for Shimon Peres than for Benjamin Netanyahu and, on the party ballots, they cast more votes for Labor than for Likud.

Positions on Foreign Policy and Defense

Public opinion research in the U.S. and Western Europe reveals that women tend to demonstrate greater support than men for pacifist positions on military issues. In a militaristic society such as Israel, we might expect that women, perhaps given their role as mothers, would tend to adopt more dovish stances. Surprisingly, however, an empirical analysis of public opinion surveys in Israel reveals no significant difference in the opinions of women and men on issues related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and paths towards solving it. The trend towards a more aggressive stance is characteristic of both sexes equally, though women are more active in peace movements (in contrast with the data worldwide presented in Table 1) (Herman, 2002).

What might explain the lack of gender differences in political views in Israel?

As mentioned, many countries are characterized by a "modern gender gap" in which leftwing parties enjoy greater support from women than from men. Israel demonstrates no such tendency with regard to any aspect of leftwing politics—either economic (socialist-oriented) or defense (dovish).

• One possible explanation is that women do not have an independent voice, meaning that they vote as their male partners and parents do. However, when both women and men were asked if their election choices were influenced by their partners, 75% answered "No."

• Another possible explanation is that the new politics is still in its infancy in Israel, since "old politics" issues (particularly defense) still take center stage and a portion of the population still belongs to tradition-oriented, religious and ultra-Orthodox sectors. Post-materialist issues, therefore, such as environmental quality and women's rights, do not carry weight in determining voting preferences. And leftwing parties that promote these issues have not succeeded in recruiting powerful political support by women.

• One way of explaining the similarity in views regarding foreign affairs and defense is that since these are stereotypically "male" issues, women make a special effort to outdo the men in their militaristic and defense-oriented stances.

Political Participation

Voter participation rates: No gender differences were found in research on voter participation rates in Israeli elections. Participation rates have dropped generally in recent years, apparently for women as well. However, this phenomenon has yet to be explored from a gender point of view, and it would be interesting to learn if the trend towards lower voting rates is also characteristic of men and women equally.

Party membership: Fewer women than men report that they are registered members of political parties. The percentage of women who say they are active in parties is especially low (less than 1% in 1997).

Interest in politics: Israelis clearly have a high level of interest in politics. In 2005, 81% said they updated themselves on political events daily or several times a week, 71% said they were interested in politics, and 65% said they discussed political issues with friends and family members (The 2005 Israeli Democracy Index). Women, however, appear to have less interest in politics. A lower percentage of women than men reported being interested in the news or speaking with family and friends about current political events.

Participation in Volunteer Organizations: In Israel, as in other countries, women are more active than men in volunteer organizations connected with education, welfare, and women's issues. Volunteer organizations have traditionally been a "nature reserve" for women's active involvement. They are part of the public sphere but adhere to the stereotypical image of women's roles and do nothing to bring them closer to positions of political power (Herzog, 1999:98-109).

Who Participates?

The profile of Israeli women who participate actively in politics differs from that of women in other democracies. Elsewhere, the younger, better-educated, and wealthier the women, the greater their political involvement; in Israel, it is older, married women of lower socioeconomic status that are more politically active than their younger, single, and more affluent counterparts. Shai (1997) has demonstrated that in Israel, as opposed to other countries, the better educated and wealthier the woman, the less likely she is to participate in politics as a citizen. Nevertheless, the demographic profile of women in top political jobs—mayors, local council members, and Knesset members, for example—is educated, wealthy, and of Ashkenazi origin (Herzog, 1999:112-132).

Explaining Israeli women's low rate of political participation relative to men

• Women have fewer resources for political participation: Time, money, and education are required for active participation in politics. Because many women fulfill two roles, as wage earners and mothers, they have less time to devote to politics. The salaries of working women are lower than those of men, and women's educational levels, though on an upward trend, are still lower than men's. (For more information, read: Milestones in Legislation and Judgements.) This leaves women with fewer resources for participation in politics. Since voting is a political activity that requires little time and few resources, voter participation rates are equal for men and women. Political party work or participating in protest activities requires a much greater investment of time and resources. Despite their integration into the job market and the changes in their social status, women are still largely focused on their personal lives—their families and immediate communities—and have less time and fewer resources than men for active participation in politics. This explanation is, however, contradicted by the fact that single Israeli women are relatively less active in politics.

• The focus on the immediate environment of family and neighborhood may be related to the fact that many Israeli women, both Jews and Arabs, are part of traditional religious cultures in which no significant change has taken place in the status of women. Political matters belong to the public sphere, which is both inaccessible and of little interest to women in traditional cultures. Research by Yishai (1997), however, indicates that Arab women express an interest in politics and that their views are more extreme than those of Arab men.

Summary

There is no "women's voice" in Israeli politics, and Israeli women do not appear to lean towards the economic left, as do women in other democratic countries. Interestingly, Israeli women do not express a more "dovish" stance than Israeli men.  Regarding political participation, the women's voice is weaker than the men's; women in Israel and throughout the world do not participate in politics as actively as men. It is evident that despite the enormous progress towards gender equality, social gaps still exist, expressed in part by the limited participation of women in politics.

Sources

Arian, Asher, 1998. The Second Republic: Politics in Israel, New Jersey: Chatham House Publishers.

Arian, Asher, Nir Atmor and Yael Hadar (2007). Israeli Democracy Index 2007, Jerusalem: The Israel Democracy Institute.

Arian, Asher, Pazit Bin-Nun, Shlomit Barnea, Raphael Ventura, and Michal Shamir (2005). Israeli Democracy Index 2005, Jerusalem: The Israel Democracy Institute.

Gratch, Haya, 1973. Twenty-Five Years of Social Research in Israel, Jerusalem: Jerusalem Academic Press.

Herman, Tamar (2002). "The Israeli Peace Movement: The Current Situation and Chances of Success" (Hebrew).

Herzog, Hanna, 1999. Gendering Politics: Women in Israel, Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.

IDEA

Inglehart, Ronald, and Pippa Norris, 2003. Rising Tide: Gender, Equality and Cultural Change around the World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Yishai, Yael, 1997. Between the Flag and the Banner: Women in Israeli Politics, Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press.