Angry men and Civic women? Gendered effects of conflict on political participation

We study the effect of the 1998-99 Kosovo war on current levels of political participation, disaggregating our analysis by the type of conflict experience, namely death or injury to self or a family member, or displacement, and by gender. We show that conflict is associated with more political participation, but with important distinctions between genders in terms of the form of participation and the experience itself. Displacement is associated with more voting among women, but not among men, and with more demonstrating by men but weaker or no effects for women; death and injury are associated with more political party membership for men, but not women. We argue that while experiences of conflict do generally increase levels of political participation, the form that this takes varies by gender, with effects on private, civic, action among women, and effects on direct, public, active, arguably more emotionally heightened engagement among men.