スウェーデンにおける女性の反EU傾向

政治選好を手がかりに

抄録

This article focuses on anti-EU tendency of Swedish women and tries to examine it from a viewpoint of political preferences. The aim of this study is to investigate reasons of Swedish women's strong anti-EU tendency.
In the referendum concerning Swedish EU membership in 1994, a majority voted “yes” and Sweden decided to become an EU member. However, support for EU membership has been weak in public opinion in Sweden. Since the early 1990s, percentage of “against” the EU has been higher than “for” in almost all opinion researches. Especially, Swedish women tend to be against the EU. Even in the referendum, a majority of women voted “no”, though a majority of men was “yes”. This disparity still continues according to opinion surveys. It is noteworthy of notice that women's percentage of “against” is always higher than men's one in almost all the socioeconomic categories. Opinion surveys on Swedish EMU membership show the same gender difference.
This gender gap is supposed to relate to general political preferences. Women's political preferences changed in the 1980s. Swedish women turned leftish and became environmentally conscious. They pay much more attention to social and environmental issues than men do. Thus women have strong tendency to chose and support political parties concerning social security, family, education, and environment as important policy areas.
Swedish women's support and evaluation on political parties relate to political parties' EU policy. Political parties that have high percentage of women's supporter take anti-EU policy and women rate that policy highly. In contrast, many women who support parties that take pro-EU policy give low evaluation on parties' policy. Anti-EU political parties emphasize negative influences of the EU on social issue, environment, and gender equality in Sweden.
From a viewpoint of political preferences, Swedish women's main reasons to stand against the EU are fear and anxiety about social security, employment in public sector, environment, and gender equality. Women concern about retreat of policies in these issues by being an EU member. However, there is a possibility that Swedish women's anti-EU tendency makes the EU pay attention to social, environmental, and gender policies that have not enough developed at the EU level yet.