We saw in the previous chapter how class and other economic characteristics added only partially and in detail to our understanding of the process whereby individuals become politically activated. Here we turn to a consideration of some other factors which might add more substantially to the story. These we refer to as ‘personal and situational’, insofar as they relate directly to the individual and his or her immediate situation in life. The chapter itself is organised around two central factors of this type – gender and age – and the contribution they make to participation. In undertaking this analysis, however, we move into a number of other circumstances, such as marital status, family structure, employment status and geographical mobility that expand and amplify our findings well beyond those two elements. Taken together, the whole group of factors, whilst obviously not exhaustive, should help us further to understand the forces that shape what citizens do in the political arena. We turn first to the question of gender.

Gender

Studies of political participation in numerous countries have regularly discovered a ‘gender gap’ whereby men have been found to be more involved and active than women. Milbrath and Goel, for example, found this finding to be ‘one of the most thoroughly substantiated in social science’ (1977:116). Verba, Nie and Kim seemed merely to confirm this generalisation when they uncovered male activity rates that were substantially in excess of female rates (except possibly in the USA, where the gap was a relatively modest one), in all the countries included in their study (1978:235).