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Personality Traits and the Gender Gap in Ideology 1

What explains the gender gap in ideology, i.e. the observation that women tend to be more leftist than men? We provide new evidence showing that personality traits play a key role. Using a novel high-quality data set, we show that the mediating (i.e. indirect) e¤ects of gender operating through personality traits by far dominate the direct e¤ects of gender. They also dominate other potential di¤erences between the sexes like income or education as explanatory factors. Our ndings suggest that women tend to be more leftist than men mainly because they have di¤erent personalities, which, in turn, shape their expressed ideology. Taking such mediating e¤ects of personality traits into account explains over three quarters of the observed gender gap in general ideological preferences.