Risk Aversion, Gender, and Constitutional Change

Verge Mestre, Tània; Guinjoan Cesena, Marc; Rodon i Casarramona, Antoni

doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1743923X15000264

Risk Aversion, Gender, and Constitutional Change

Citation

Verge T, Guinjoan M, Rodon T. Risk Aversion, Gender, and Constitutional Change. Politics & Gender. 2015;11(3):499-521. DOI: 10.1017/S1743923X15000264

Abstract

The effect of risk aversion on political behavior has received little scholarly attention. High-stake political decisions involving large amounts of uncertainty such as sovereignty referendums, though, provide a fertile ground to measure the effects of the psychological dispositions toward risk on voters’ decisions. Using experimental survey data, this article explores how risk-adverse attitudes might contribute to explaining the gender gap in support for independence in the Catalan case. The empirical analysis suggests that risk aversion has heterogeneous effects across gender. Women’s likelihood of voting in favor of secession is depressed by uneasiness with risk taking while men’s is not. Yet, the gendered impact of risk aversion on support for independence is conditional upon the type of hypothetical conjunctures about the future of the independent state respondents are confronted with. Whereas positive scenarios do not produce differences across groups, under negative scenarios risk-adverse women are significantly less likely to vote in favor of secession than men.