The gender gap in political self-efficacy originates early in life and is among the most persistent inequalities in political attitudes across Western democracies. The difficulties in accessing data for early adolescents have resulted in limited research available to provide an understanding on how gender differences in political self-efficacy are developed. In this article we provide unique evidence on the development of the efficacy gap during secondary school. The Citizenship Educational Longitudinal study data from England on young people between the ages 11–16 shows that boys increase their levels of political self-efficacy significantly during this period while girls do not. Secondly, we show that teaching methods that are expected to enable the development of internal political efficacy, such as classroom discussions, are accelerating the gender gap in perceived abilities to get engaged in politics. Our findings show that, despite having the same access to classroom discussions in schools, this experience has a positive effect in the development of political efficacy for boys but, if anything, a negative effect for girls. Furthermore, even a small number of boys in the classroom discussions appears detrimental to girls’ political efficacy.

中文翻译：

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政治效能方面的性别差距：课堂讨论的加速效应


政治自我效能感的性别差距起源于生命的早期，是西方民主国家政治态度中最持久的不平等之一。由于难以获取青少年早期的数据，因此可用于了解政治自我效能感的性别差异的研究有限。在本文中，我们提供了关于中学期间疗效差距发展的独特证据。英格兰对 11-16 岁年轻人的公民教育纵向研究数据显示，在此期间，男孩的政治自我效能水平显着提高，而女孩则没有。其次，我们表明，有望促进内部政治效能发展的教学方法，例如课堂讨论，正在加速参与政治的感知能力的性别差距。我们的研究结果表明，尽管在学校有相同的课堂讨论机会，但这种经历对男孩的政治效能的发展有积极影响，但如果有的话，对女孩也有负面影响。此外，即使课堂讨论中只有少数男孩参与讨论，似乎也不利于女孩的政治效率。