Partisan Disagreement: The Role of Media,Personal Networks and Gender in Forming Political Preferences

Abstract

In this article, we seek to understand the role of media and non-media personal networks in generating the opportunity for women to express political preferences that are different from men within the household—what we call partisan disagreement—using a survey of over 6,000 households in the Indian urban clusters of Patna and Dhanbad. We demonstrate a significant gender gap in both mobile phone ownership and media access among working age women. Due to low media access among women, we find that partisan disagreement is most likely when women have access to personal networks outside of the household, either due to employment or an opportunity to travel outside the home. For instance, women engaged in agricultural labour are 8 to 9 percentage points more likely to demonstrate partisan disagreement than unemployed women. While access is still low among women, men and women display similar patterns of social media usage. We suggest that this is due to the fact that social media can be consumed privately without family interference and highlight the potential of social media to reduce gender gaps in media access as mobile phone penetration and levels of education grow in India.