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Working paper title | Gender after war: Casualties, victimization, and voting during nation-building

By: Sinara Gharibyan, Monika Köppl-Turyna, & Christian Ochsner

Abstract

How do losses during wars affect the gender divide in voting and the support of nation-building? We use the unique voting system in Austria's First Republic (1918 to 1934), which reported election results by gender. We link local war-affectedness during World War I to subsequent gender differences in turnout and voting. Higher war exposure increases women's turnout much more than men's, but only in national elections and not in local elections. This turnout gap translates one-to-one into higher vote shares for anti-state parties that aimed to undermine the Austrian state. The gender gap is particularly pronounced by losses perceived as senseless, amplified by local cultural values in smaller and remote places. Our results show that victimization after wars undermines the ruling order in a gendered way.

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