This manuscript examines the structural causes of the gender gap in political interest. In many countries, men are more interested in politics than women. Yet, in others, men and women prove equally interested. We explain this cross‐national variation by focusing on the effects of societal religiosity. Since religion sustains the traditional gender order, contexts where societal religiosity is low undermine the taken‐for‐grantedness of this order, subjecting it to debate. Men then become especially interested in politics to try to reassert their traditional gender dominance, or to compensate for their increasingly uncertain social status. A secular environment thus increases political interest more among men than among women, expanding this gender gap. Using the World and European Values Survey, we estimate three‐level regression models and test our religiosity‐based approach in 96 countries. The results are consistent with our hypothesis.

中文翻译：

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社会宗教信仰和政治利益方面的性别差距，1990-2014

这份手稿研究了政治利益中性别差距的结构性原因。在许多国家，男性比女性对政治更感兴趣。然而，在其他方面，男性和女性表现出同样的兴趣。我们通过关注社会宗教信仰的影响来解释这种跨国差异。由于宗教维持传统的性别秩序，社会宗教信仰低的环境破坏了这种秩序的理所当然，使其成为辩论的对象。然后，男性对政治特别感兴趣，试图重申他们传统的性别优势，或者弥补他们日益不确定的社会地位。因此，世俗环境更能增加男性的政治兴趣，而不是女性，扩大了这种性别差距。使用世界和欧洲价值观调查，我们估计了三级回归模型，并在 96 个国家测试了我们基于宗教信仰的方法。结果与我们的假设一致。