PhD thesis defence by Ingvild Zinober
Compared to women, men are less concerned about the environment and climate change, engage less in eco-friendly behaviours, and are less likely to support climate mitigation policies or vote for green parties or parties with green political agendas. In my dissertation, I refer to this empirical pattern as the Green Gender Gap.
The first paper offers an important empirical contribution by examining the robustness of the Green Gender Gap and its political implications across Europe, including the under-researched regions of Southern and Central/Eastern Europe. Using 20 years of European Social Survey data from 36 countries, I find that the gap exists across all European regions. However, it does not always translate into political behaviour. For example, in Eastern Europe, a pronounced gender gap in environmental attitudes does not correspond with a gap in green party support, underscoring the importance of political context. Furthermore, the gap cannot be explained by conventional variables used to account for gender differences in political behaviour, such as education, occupation, urban residence, risk aversion, or left–right ideological placement.
The second paper examines whether the Green Gender Gap stems from early-life gender socialisation. Using data from Norwegian adolescents aged 13 to 18, I find that by age 13, boys already express less concern about climate change than girls. From the beginning of upper secondary school, they are also less supportive of green policies, and by age 17 to 18, a gap in support for the Green Party has emerged. As these differences emerge before gendered educational or occupational sorting, and within the Norwegian context characterised by little structural gender segregation, the findings suggest that early-life socialisation, not structural factors, plays a key role in shaping the Green Gender Gap.
The third paper develops a theoretical framework grounded in gender theory and social psychology. It conceptualises political engagement as a form of gender performance, where individuals enact gender roles through political preferences. Building on the notion that green politics is culturally coded as feminine, I argue that men are distancing themselves from green ideologies to affirm traditional masculinity. Based on a Norwegian case study, a cross-national analysis of 24 European countries, and a survey of 1,300 bachelor students, I find that gender role identity significantly shapes men’s support for green politics. Additionally, the Norwegian Green Party was widely seen as the most feminine party, reinforcing the idea that voting green is culturally perceived as a feminine act.
Together, these three papers offer a comprehensive investigation of the Green Gender Gap, revealing that the phenomenon is both empirically robust and deeply rooted in gendered socialisation and gender role performance. By demonstrating that structural variables cannot account for the gap and that it emerges early in life, the thesis challenges dominant frameworks in research on the gender gap in political behaviour.
Ingvild Zinober is a political scientist whose research lies at the intersection of gender studies and political behaviour. Her work explores how gender role identity and norms shape political attitudes and voting behaviour, with particular attention to the political expressions of masculinity and their influence on men’s political engagement. In her dissertation, she draws on insights from gender research to formulate a new theoretical framework for studying the gender gap in views on climate and environmental politics, as well as support for green parties in Europe. During her doctoral programme, Ingvild visited the Department of Political Science at the University of Oslo. She has also been an active member of both the Environmental and Climate Politics and Gender and Politics working groups at the European University Institute.