From male dominance to sharing: partner’s class and female political party identification 1964–2010

Abstract

ABSTRACT Has the dominating influence of husband’s/male partner’s class position on his wife’s/partners’ political party identification declined in Britain? Contrary to predictions, previous research did not reveal a decline in male dominance. We claim a more accurate test by using a theoretical-based cohort design and more appropriate models. To investigate the relative impact of women’s and their men’s class position, we analyse married and partnered women in the British Election Surveys and distinguish four cohorts with a 1888–1991-birth range and model the relative impact of spouse’s class positions with adjusted logistic diagonal reference models allowing the absolute association to change over time. The results show that in case the husband is self-employed, a skilled labourer/foreman or an unskilled/semiskilled labourer, there are no cohort changes in the relative association and women weight their own class position equal to that of husband’s class position. However, there is a substantial cohort effect in case the husband has a salariat or lower white-collar class position. In such cases, there is a male dominance class association, but this disappeared for the most recent (i.e. 1961–1991) birth-cohort. For most classes, a sharing-model (both partners equally important) is for the youngest cohort the most appropriate description.