Does Work Experience Change Your Political Attitudes? Gender Gaps and Class in Panel Data

Existing research has focused on women´s primary role in housework as an explanation for attitudinal gender gaps but stands at a crossroads as women´s labour force participation rates are catching up to men´s and the gender gaps remain. This article seeks to expand the idea of gender roles to the gendered nature of work experience as a result of gender-based occupational segregation. In doing so it synthesises an attempt to redraw the class map into a two-dimensional space divided by task structure and authority logic as a predictor of political attitudes with the literature on gender gaps. Is there a direct link between the attitudinal gender gaps and the gendered experience of work? Drawing on panel data and fixed effects estimation the causal nature of work experience is scrutinised. While previously noted differences in attitudes between different positions in the two-dimensional class scheme are (partly) observable, these differences largely cannot be attributed to a causal effect of work experience across different political attitudes. Rather, evidence points to the existence of personality-based selection into certain class positions and the stability of political attitudes irrespective of work experience. Although individuals in different occupations differ this is not because of their work. These findings contradict social role theory as an explanation for gender gaps by discounting the relevance of specific roles such as occupation in (gendered) attitude formation.