Political Participation and the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract:

This project explores the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic for women’s political participation in Canada. Drawing on data from the Canadian Election Study’s Democracy Checkup surveys, we examine how women’s participation evolved with the introduction of public health measures to manage the spread of the virus. The disruptions caused by the COVID -19 pandemic changed the availability of important resources that are precursors to political participation; time, money, and access to opportunities for political socialization became scarcer. These disruptions were not distributed equally across sociodemographic groups but instead have been structured by the politics of gender and have been most pronounced for those citizens who were less likely to participate in politics before the pandemic (Johnston et al. 2020, Baiden et al. 2022, Davison et al. 2020, Tolley 2019). This presentation probes the impacts of these changes for gender gaps in political participation and specifically considers the experiences of racialized women and mothers.

 

Bio:

Patricia Mockler is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Canadian Opinion Research Archive at Queen’s University and Western University. Her research examines political participation, deliberative democracy and democratic innovations. She is especially interested in heterogeneity in political participation in the Canadian context, with an emphasis on non-electoral forms of participation. She has published manuscripts examining inclusion in democratic innovations, election fundraising, and the defining features of deliberative mini-publics.