What's changed and what hasn't when it comes to the gender divide in Alberta politics

A lot has changed when it comes to men, women and society over the last 30 years, but some of the same gender divides that we saw decades ago still show up in politics today.

Women in Alberta are more likely to position themselves on the left side of the political spectrum and men on the right, according to data from the Vote Compass tool gathered over the past few weeks, which mirrors decades of polling and public-opinion surveys across Canada.

Women are also more likely to cite health care and education as the issues most important to them, while men are more likely to cite economic and financial issues.

None of that comes as a surprise to political scientists who have studied the role of gender in politics. They've seen similar patterns for a long time, dating back to an era when women and men played more distinct roles in society than they do today.

Some well known political theory from the 20th century suggests the difference in political views is rooted in these social differences. Men were more likely to play an economic role in society, working and earning money, while women were more likely to play a social role, raising children and caring for family members. So it made sense that men's political concerns were more fiscal, women's more social.

But today, the gendered nature of these roles has shifted. Women are more likely to be primary breadwinners in a household than they were in the past, and men are more likely to spend time raising children.

And yet the gendered nature of political views remains. Why?

There's not a simple answer to that question but Alberta-based political scientists who study this topic have a few ideas.

One is that the gendered nature of social roles takes a long time to truly change, and perhaps even longer when it comes to politics. Another is that one of the more rapid shifts in gender roles we've seen — in post-secondary education — is reinforcing the "economic-man, social-woman" divide. 

Tens of thousands of Albertans have responded to the Vote Compass online tool, which asks users dozens of questions about their views on a range of topics.

One of the questions asks users where they would place themselves on the left-right political spectrum on a scale from 0 to 10, with 0 being the most far-left and 10 being the most far-right.

The proportion of people who rated themselves dead-centre as a 5 was almost perfectly split between men and women.

But the self-ratings became more dominated by women on the left side of the spectrum, and more dominated by men on the right.

Lisa Young, a political scientist with the University of Calgary, wasn't surprised by these results.