Gender Vote Gaps Among Ethnic Minority Voters in Britain

Abstract Both gender and ethnicity have received increasing scholarly attention in British elections. But surprisingly little is published on whether there is a gender gap among ethnic minority voters, although intersectional perspectives suggest that this matters a great deal. We analyse data from Understanding Society to test whether there is such a gender gap among the five main ethnic minority groups with high levels of electoral eligibility and participation. We show that there is a positive gender gap with women in Pakistani and Bangladeshi ethnic groups more likely to support Labour than the Conservatives, but that there is not a gender gap among other ethnic minority groups. We further show that these gender gaps do not change in magnitude when socio-economic characteristics or political attitudes are taken into account. Our results suggest that further work is needed to explain gender gaps in vote choice among ethnic minority voters in Britain.