Gender Differences in Political Participation: Comparing Street Demonstrators in Sweden and the United Kingdom

Abstract

Research on gender and politics has primarily focused on women’s participation in women’s movements and institutional politics separately. Our paper is innovative in multiple respects: First, employing a comparative perspective we analyse what impact gender regimes have on participation in street protests. Second, we study the relationship between participation in electoral and protest politics and how this relationship is gendered. Third, we compare the participation of men and women in social movements. We are able to do this by drawing on nuanced survey data of five street demonstrations in the UK and Sweden which we benchmark against the more widely used European Social Survey. Our comparative research demonstrates that involvement in protest and institutional politics varies by gender, country and context. Our findings have important implications for gender equality in terms of social inclusion and political representation and contribute to political sociology, sociology of gender, and social movement research.