The emerging gender gap: Cultural and economic conservatism in the Netherlands 1970-1992

Research on gender differences in political alignments and cultural orienta tions in the past decades reveals a large value change in women relative to that in men, indicating that women might recently have become less conserv ative than men, whereas women used to be more conservative in many respects . In this article this possible reversal in the gender gap in recent decade s is analyzed. Recent research has demonstrated that in the Netherlands wom en are presently less conservative than men. This lower level of conservati sm in Dutch women is apparent with respect to both economic and cultural is sues. It is investigated whether these gender differences are due to a reve rsal in the gender gap in the Netherlands and if so, how this emerging gend er gap can be explained Three explanations are hypothesized: one in terms o f the characteristics of the youngest generations (the gender-cohort model) , the second in terms of growing structural equality between women and men in general (the situational/structural model), and a specification of the s econd model, in which differential effects of structural factors for women and men are presumed to have their effect (the gender-interaction model), N either of the three tested models was in itself able to fully explain the r esults. The gender gap can partly be explained by growing structural equali ty between women and men, partly by the fact that the gender gap is largest in the youngest generations (economic conservatism), and partly by the fac t that the gender gap is largest between groups of "independent" women and their male counterparts. Possible additional determinants are also discusse d.