How Gender and Work Status Shape Political Ideology: Evidence from Homemakers in Spain

This article analyzes the role of women's engagement in paid versus unpaid work in determining gender and intra-gender polarization in political ideology. Modern gender gaps in political ideology, where women place to the left of men, have replaced traditional gaps in Western democracies since the 1990s. Southern Europe, with low rates of women's labor force participation, lagged behind this transformation. This study examines the case of Spain for 1993–2019, to explore the long-run evolution of political ideology at the intersection of gender and work status. Homemaking status is a strong driver of conservative political positioning. Instrumenting homemaking status with regional-level labor force participation to alleviate endogeneity issues confirms a causal chain: macro trends in women's labor force participation rate predict the probability of homemaking occupation at the individual level, which in turn impact political ideology. The article argues that intra-gender occupational gaps are crucial in determining contemporary political cleavages. HIGHLIGHTS: The interaction between gender and paid and unpaid work status drives political ideology. Homemaking status is identified as a strong driver of conservative political positioning in Spain, similar to findings for Italy and Turkey. Macroeconomic trends in women's labor force participation predict women's greater support of left-wing political parties. Macroeconomic growth patterns that exclude women from jobs may trigger a political tendency toward authoritarian conservative regimes.