Gender gaps and constitutional change: trust, feminist content and voter support in Chile’s 2022 referendum

Abstract

Research on sovereignty referendums shows that under high institutional uncertainty, gender gaps are often associated with greater risk aversion among women towards change and with campaigns that emphasize the costs of abandoning the status quo. Less is known about how these gaps operate in constitutional referendums that redefine democratic rules while incorporating an explicit women’s rights agenda. We analyse Chile’s 2022 constitutional referendum. Using survey data collected in the days before the vote, we find that women trusted the body responsible for drafting the new constitution more than did men, expressed higher support for the proposal’s provisions (including gender-equality provisions) and were less likely to reject the text, despite higher levels of electoral indecision. The results do not support the claim that feminist demands were the main cause of the proposal’s rejection, which appears more closely associated with contingent political factors than with those demands themselves.