“Votes for Women” on the edge of urbanization

This paper explores the existence of a gender voting gap in an economy that lies on the edge of urbanization. Building on a unique community level dataset for Greece in 1950s we investigate: (i) the impact of women’s enfranchisement on party vote shares and (ii) the role of female labour force participation on the observed gender voting gap. Our analysis provides strong evidence in favour of the “traditional gender voting gap” (women vote more conservatively compared to men) in the urbanized communities of our sample, and no gender voting differences in the rural ones. Our empirical findings also suggest that the observed gender voting gap is highly conditional upon the level of “Out of Labour Force” female population. This is because in an economic environment characterized by limited demand of female labour force, women tend to support more vigorously the sanctity of family values and therefore vote more conservatively compared to men.