Toward a Modern Gender Gap in Left-Right Self-Placement: A Study Case of the Population Aged Over 64 Years in Spain

Abstract

The gender gap in political/ideological self-positioning literature usually considers that Spain is stagnant within traditional parameters, where women are more right-wing than men. However, an analysis of more than 87,000 opinion polls collected by the CIS over a period of almost 40 years shows that Spain is moving toward the modern gender gap, although following a particular path conditioned by its own history of the 20th century. These findings disagree with the conclusions reached by Inglehart and Norris about Spanish women in their study about the development of modern gender gap. Our research investigates the impact of cohort and period effects on the population aged over 64, whose political identity, in accordance with the theories of political socialization, was formed in a context alien to the modernization process, largely coinciding with the Franco dictatorship in Spain.