Please join the Department of Political Science as we welcome Dr. Elizabeth Sperber, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Denver University, in Denver, CO. Dr. Sperber's talk is scheduled Wednesday, March 20th, 2024 at 12:00p in Social Sciences room 2071. This event is free and open to all faculty, staff, and students. 

A Zoom broadcast can be arranged, if needed please contact Department Administrator Marliss McGarvey. Talk title and abstract are below, as well as the event flyer.

Title: Addressing Gender Gaps in Political Participation in Africa: The Gendered Effect of Promoting Youth Political Efficacy in Civic and Voter Education

Abstract: 

In many parts of the world, young women are significantly less likely to participate in electoral politics than young men. Can certain approaches to civic and voter education (CVE) reduce this gap, and if so, how? Few studies directly address this question and existing evidence cautions that widely used approaches may unintentionally decrease women's political participation, especially in developing countries. 

To address this challenge, we paired insights from studies of youth political psychology with community-collaborative methods to evaluate an efficacy-promoting CVE course in Zambia--which has a youth-skewed population and significant age and gender gaps in political participation. We assigned 775 young adults (18-35 years old) to either an information-only intervention or an information plus efficacy-building intervention ahead of Zambia's general elections in 2021.

Across a wide range of intended and actual political behaviors, we found that the efficacy-building CVE intervention reduced gender gaps in political participation relative to the information-only condition and to baseline. Evidence suggests that the intervention led young women to re-envisage themselves as empowered and politically deserving members of a Zambian youth cohort, which increased their collective self efficacy and excitement more than it did for young men.