Labor Unrest, Political Activation and Female Electoral Participation in the 1930s

According to most of the available evidence, women were less likely to turn out than men when they got the right to vote. However, often these figures are based on simple comparisons of turnout rates between the pre and post female enfranchisement elections. Much less is known, however, about the root causes of female political participation upon formal electoral enfranchisement, and the variation in the magnitude of the gender turnout gap. This paper argues that past political experiences before the franchise might be key to understand women’s actual behavior when they got the right to vote. This question is analyzed by exploiting a wave of labour unrest in Catalonia during the 1915-1920 period in the textile sector, prior to the introduction of female suffrage. We have compiled a unique individual level data-set of official registers with individual voting roll-calls as well as other personal characteristics, such as age, address, gender and literacy. We also exploit detailed information on local industry composition and labour conflicts at the local level to investigate the political activation of women and its effects on electoral participation later on.