Hvis bare flere kunne stille! Politisk motivasjon blant kvinner og menn

The paper focuses on the supply side of local political recruitment processes in Norway. More precisely we are looking at gender differences in political motivation. At a general level we find that women are less motivated for involving in political activities than are men. The supply of female recruits is slightly lower than that of males. Still the study reveals that there is a considerable potential for political involvement among women. Among those who declare themselves willing to engage in politics there is no gender difference. Concerning political interest we find that females are less interested in politics in general compared to their male counterparts. However, when we look at interest for politics at the local and regional level, women are just as interested as men. When taking a closer look at the specific policy areas in which women are interested we find that they take more interest in welfare policies than do men. Hence, female citizens are primarily interested in those policy areas that are the most important to Norwegian local authorities. The last part of our paper deals with the question of contextual effects on political motivation. We take particular interest in the assumption that female citizens’ political motivation will be affected by the share of female councillors in their own municipality. In a multilevel analysis we do find a positive, albeit relatively modest, effect of the share of female councillors on political motivation among female citizens. The evidence seems to give some support to the supposition that a high share of female councillors represents a stimulating context for potential female recruits