Abstract
Gender has long been considered as one of the key determinants of political participation. Studies on gender inequalities in political participation rarely focus on youth and sporadically examine how gender intersects with other sources of socio-economic inequalities. The chapter using survey data from the EU-funded EURYKA project first examines whether a gender gap, indeed, exists for Greek youth’s participation in electoral politics, and in specific modes of non-institutionalised and institutionalised political acts. Then to better understand the determinants of gender inequalities, we investigate the potential effects of specific socio-economic resources. The findings unveil specific gender gaps in signing petitions and buycotting products which are higher among young women whereas contacting or visiting politicians is more prevalent among young men. Our expectations regarding the significant role of socio-economic inequalities in shaping young women’s political participation are clearly confirmed only for demonstrating in protests and voting in elections. Studies on youth political participation are highly valuable in understanding the present and future polity. Our chapter contributes to related research on the factors that interrelate with gender inequalities in youth political participation and calls for further research examining the pathways that young men and young women follow to participate in politics.
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Notes
- 1.
Electoral participation refers to voting. Institutionalised forms of political participation refer to activities such as political party membership, attending political party meetings, contacting/visiting politicians and local government officials, donating money to political organisations and parties, etc. Non-institutionalised forms of political participation refer to actions such as joining a strike, attending demonstrations, marches and rallies, boycotting products of buying products for political or ethical reasons, singing petitions, etc. (Norris, 2004).
- 2.
Results presented in this chapter have been obtained within the project “Reinventing Democracy in Europe: Youth Doing Politics in Times of Increasing Inequalities” (EURYKA). This project was funded by the European Commission under the HORIZON 2020 programme (grant agreement no. 727025).
- 3.
International Monetary Fund (IMF), the European Central Bank (ECB), and the European Commission (EC).
- 4.
Data for this study were collected in 1985 in the context of a comparable research on the political culture in Southern European countries (Mavrogordatos et al., 1988).
- 5.
SYRIZA won the 2015 elections and formed the first left-wing government after the end of the dictatorship (1967–1974) and the restoration of democracy (1975) in the country. The preceding elections (2012) mark another signpost in the post dictatorship political era of the country since it resulted in a tri-party coalition government and a seven-party parliament marking thus a distinct break in the country’s long history of bi-partisan political life.
- 6.
Indicatively: the gender gap in part time employment in the age groups 15–24 and 25–64 was on average 10.5% and 6.76%, respectively. Estimates are based on Eurostat 2020 data reported in Papadakis et al. (2020)
- 7.
In 2008, the difference between young (age 15–34) men’s and women’s employment rate was 17.6% (62% and 44.4%, respectively) (Filinis, 2021).
- 8.
Respondents who were not eligible to vote are excluded from the analysis.
- 9.
The response “At some previous point in my life but not in the past 5 years” is excluded from the analysis.
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Petousi, V., Papageorgiou, Y., Kalogeraki, S. (2022). Engendering Political Participation Among Greek Youth in Times of Crisis. In: Kalogeraki, S., Kousis, M. (eds) Youth Political Participation in Greece: A Multiple Methods Perspective. Palgrave Studies in Young People and Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09905-2_3
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