**7. Conclusions**

In this study, the recent increase of the gender gap in political elections was addressed by analyzing gender differences in SDO of political activists. Our findings confirm the soft version of gender invariance hypothesis. However, our study has several limits; we still do not know if people who chose these different groups had originally higher or lower SDO or if the experience of belonging to different groups changes the SDO. Furthermore, we did not explore whether changes in SDO occurred in people who were active participants in different political groups. Future studies should ascertain whether SDO scores diminish after being an active member of the political moderate leftist group and if these changes occur in less time or more often when participating in extremist groups with even stronger egalitarian ideals. Moreover, to understand more the influence of group identification maintained by the SIT, the number of years of group involvement should be taken into consideration in future studies. Future research could also explore if new media like partisan Internet sites and social networks can enhance or reduce SDO.

Our results, with their present limits, also show that SDO is strongest in males and females in far right-wing groups, and these findings could help explain why these groups are now rising in recent elections in Europe and several other countries worldwide. One fundamental belief of SDT theory is that certain groups of people are entitled to rule over other groups [13]. The SDO scale elicits agreementdisagreement with statements such as "it's a good thing that some groups are at the top, and others at the bottom" or "Some groups of people are simply inferior to other groups." "America first," which Trump launched, had a very precise meaning, to favor American-born citizens over immigrants. This slogan has been echoed by right-wing nationalist parties in Italy ("Italy first") and Hungary, Poland, and Turkey. In all these countries, authoritarian leaders have emerged and are sustained by male and female supporters, who perceive themselves similar to their leaders, and in fact, both authoritarian leaders and followers probably share very high SDO. As a matter of fact, recent studies have shown that SDO is related to support for radical right parties [57].

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**Author details**

Minou Ella Mebane1

2 University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy

\*, Antonio Aiello2

3 ASPIC (School of Specialization in Community Clinical Psychology and

© 2020 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,

1 University Giustino Fortunato, Benevento, Italy

Integrated Humanistic Psychotherapy), Rome, Italy

provided the original work is properly cited.

\*Address all correspondence to: me.mebane@unifortunato.eu

and Donata Francescato3

*Political Gender Gap and Social Dominance Orientation*

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.92222*

*Political Gender Gap and Social Dominance Orientation DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.92222*

*Psycho-Social Aspects of Human Sexuality and Ethics*

differences in dominance predisposition.

influence of context.

**7. Conclusions**

and vice versa.

experiences should promote egalitarian attitudes in both men and women activists

On the whole, our results sustain more the validity of the soft than the strong version of the invariance hypothesis [25]. We observed general differences in SDO score across political groups (e.g., SDO score for right-wing were higher than leftwing); therefore, males of all the activists' groups showed a higher social dominance than females invariantly belonging to left- or right-wing political groups. The soft version implies indeed that SDO difference between men and women should be essentially constant across cultural and situational factors, everything else being equal. Our study confirmed that SDO differentiated men and women invariantly across cultural and situational factors such as political activism practiced both in moderate and extremist political groups. Male right-wing extremists had the highest SDO scores and female left-wing extremists the lowest. Still, the gender differences persisted in all groups, giving strong support for the temperamental

Our data did show also that extreme right-wing women presented significantly higher scores of SDO than men belonging to left-wing parties. This result can be congruent with both SIT and SDT, which emphasizes the importance of group identification and the soft version of the SDO gender hypothesis that recognizes the

In this study, the recent increase of the gender gap in political elections was addressed by analyzing gender differences in SDO of political activists. Our findings confirm the soft version of gender invariance hypothesis. However, our study has several limits; we still do not know if people who chose these different groups had originally higher or lower SDO or if the experience of belonging to different groups changes the SDO. Furthermore, we did not explore whether changes in SDO occurred in people who were active participants in different political groups. Future studies should ascertain whether SDO scores diminish after being an active member of the political moderate leftist group and if these changes occur in less time or more often when participating in extremist groups with even stronger egalitarian ideals. Moreover, to understand more the influence of group identification maintained by the SIT, the number of years of group involvement should be taken into consideration in future studies. Future research could also explore if new media like

partisan Internet sites and social networks can enhance or reduce SDO.

Our results, with their present limits, also show that SDO is strongest in males and females in far right-wing groups, and these findings could help explain why these groups are now rising in recent elections in Europe and several other countries worldwide. One fundamental belief of SDT theory is that certain groups of people are entitled to rule over other groups [13]. The SDO scale elicits agreementdisagreement with statements such as "it's a good thing that some groups are at the top, and others at the bottom" or "Some groups of people are simply inferior to other groups." "America first," which Trump launched, had a very precise meaning, to favor American-born citizens over immigrants. This slogan has been echoed by right-wing nationalist parties in Italy ("Italy first") and Hungary, Poland, and Turkey. In all these countries, authoritarian leaders have emerged and are sustained by male and female supporters, who perceive themselves similar to their leaders, and in fact, both authoritarian leaders and followers probably share very high SDO. As a matter of fact, recent studies have shown that SDO is related to support

**68**

for radical right parties [57].
