The role of political engagement of parents in reducing the gender gap in political self-efficacy

Compared with European men, the political self-efficacy of European women is significantly lower: in all European countries, women are generally more pessimistic about their abilities to understand, influence or participate in politics. Yet, we know surprisingly little about how political self-efficacy develops in general and about what explains the gender gap in particular. In this article, we set out to explore to what extent political self-efficacy is strengthened or weakened through observing parents’ political engagement and to what extent this is gender based. We will investigate this impact both overall and by gender, specifically examining the separate influences of the mother and the father, as well as their respective roles in shaping the political self-efficacy of women and men. Our findings suggest that maternal influence exceeds that of the father. While experiences of both an engaged mother and an engaged father increase the likelihood of high levels of political self-efficacy, we find that the experience of a politically engaged mother, in particular, reduces the likelihood of low levels of political self-efficacy in adulthood.