Recent evidence across several countries suggests a widening gender ideology divide among the youngest: young women tend to be more liberal than conservative, compared with young men. In this paper, we first confirm this tendency in European countries using the European Social Survey data between 2008 and 2021. Young females increasingly identify with the left side of the political spectrum, while males are more and more inclined towards the right. Our estimates show that, in Europe, women aged 18 to 30 are now 20 percentage points more left-wing than their male counterparts. Leveraging spatial data on 3G coverage expansion since 2010 to proxy exposure to social media, we show that increase in network coverage is associated with more rightwing position for men living in rural areas and more leftwing position for women living in urban areas. Our results suggest a significant influence of social media use in widening the ideological gap.

Anna Bernard is Assistant Professor of Economics at CUBE Research Unit of Catolica Lisbon School of Business and Economics and Vice-director of PROSPER Research Center, a hub for cutting-edge research on critical economic issues such as employment, innovation, growth, poverty, inequality, and social mobility. Specialized in behavioral economics, her topics of interest lie between public economics and digital economics, with a particular focus on how Internet access influences citizen behavior. Her research is primarily empirical, using a combination of experimental, survey and proprietary data.

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