The Gendered Effect of Promoting Youth Political Efficacy in Civic Education

• In Event: Political Mobilization and Electoral Politics in Africa

Abstract

In many parts of the world, young women are significantly less likely to participate in electoral politics than young men. Can certain types of civic and voter education (CVE) efforts reduce this gap? Few rigorous studies have directly addressed this question, but existing evidence cautions that widely used approaches may adversely affect women's political participation, especially in developing countries. To address this challenge, we paired insights from recent studies of youth political psychology with community-collaborative methods to develop and test an efficacy-promoting approach to increase youth CVE in Zambia---a country with a youth-skewed population and history of both gender and age gaps in political participation. We assigned 775 young adults (18-35 years old) to either an information-only intervention or an information plus efficacy-building intervention ahead of Zambia's competitive general elections in 2021. Measuring a wide range of both intended and actual political behaviors, we find that the efficacy-building CVE intervention reduced gender gaps in political participation relative to the information-only condition and to baseline. Evidence indicates that this intervention, which used ``self-help'' style activities and affirmations, allowed young women to re-envisage themselves as deserving and empowered members of a Zambian youth cohort---an identity that increased their psychological sense of collective efficacy and excitement more than it did for young men.

Authors

• Elizabeth S. Sperber, University of Denver

• Gwyneth McClendon, New York University