Gender Gap
Social scientists suspect that there are a variety of gender gaps. In general, these
all refer to a situation where women are supposed to hold beliefs or attitudes, or
to engage in some form of socio-political activity, at a different rate or in a
different manner than men. The classic example is the long-held theory that
women are more politically conservative than men, at least as measured by
their tendency to vote for conservative parties more frequently than do men. In
the United Kingdom it has been a widely held belief that women are in this
sense more conservative than men, at least from the late 1920s when all women
were enfranchised on the same terms as men. The theory has more generally
been held to be true across Western Europe for much of the post-1945 period.
One needs to distinguish between a general and long-term tendency, and a
particular difference in voting between men and women in any one election.
The latter case can easily come about because of rational differences in the
expected utility of victory for one rather than another candidate or party, when
an issue on which men and women can be expected to have pragmatically
different interests is vital. The gender gap usually suggests a more deeply rooted
pattern of ideological preference, based on highly socialized differences in
outlook. There is very little hard evidence that such a gender gap continues to
be important in Western politics. If it ever existed the progress towards
women’s equality has almost certainly destroyed whatever deferential attitudes
may have formed the basis of such a gender gap.
In particular another gender gap, the long assumed difference in religious
adherence—such that women throughout the Christian world have tradition-
ally attended church much more frequently than men—has been thought to
underlie a political gender gap. This argument is based on the assumption that
at least some forms of religion, notably Roman Catholicism, are inherently
more conservative than secular attitudes. Women attend religious services
more, so are conditioned to be more conservative, and a religious gender
gap produces a political gender gap. However, assecularizationhas pro-
gressed, and fewer people go to church, we must assume that this underlying
mechanism is dismantling.
General Will
The general will is a political concept that originated, in its most detailed form,
with Jean JacquesRousseauin hisSocial Contractalthough similar ideas have
always existed in political thought. For Rousseau the general will meant the
collective decision of all the people in a state when they tried to consider only
what was good for the whole society rather than what they wanted as
individuals. He contrasts the general will with ‘the will of all’, which is merely
an aggregation of the separate desires of selfishly-oriented individuals. Rous-
General Will