jobs are more likely rely on a strong public sector. Given that social democratic parties traditionally favoured a strong public sector, they increasingly attracted women’s votes. Finally, liberalising divorce legislation resulted in women’s greater autonomy, but also greater financial insecurity and a greater double burden of care work and paid labour as divorced women. This, in turn, increased their reliance on the welfare state. These are some of the trends that led to the so-called“gender realignment”, with women shifting from the political centre-right to the political centre-left relative to men. Over the second half of the 20th century, these gendered shifts in political behaviour were driven, in particular, by young generations of women. 11 There are some caveats to this general theory of“gender realignment”. Firstly, this trend is not universal: beyond Western European democracies, many countries did not experience such shifts in ideological gender gaps. 12 Secondly, in countries that experienced such shifts in the ideological gender gap, this trend has stagnated since the 1990s: during the 2000s and 2010s, women did not become increasingly left wing. 13 Thirdly, new evidence suggests that the theorised mechanisms explaining the gender realignment do not seem to explain individual women’s shifting ideology. Following the life trajectories and political ideology of the same women over time, research shows that women who enter employment, attain university education, or divorce or separate from their partners do not shift towards more left-wing ideology. 14 Rather, more left-wing women are also the ones who are more likely self-select into such life trajectories, which raises the question of why women become more left wing to begin with. More in-depth research may thus be needed to explain why we see different trends across different countries, why these trends seem to have stagnated in the 2000s and 2010s, and what the mechanisms are that drive women’s political realignment. Overall, many Western European countries have seen a realignment from women voting more traditionally and right wing than men in the 1950s and 1960s to women voting more for social democratic parties and identifying more strongly as left wing than men in the 1990s. This trend goes hand in hand with increasing women’s emancipation and liberalising societies. So far, research does not sufficiently explain cross-country differences and the precise mechanisms explaining this realignment. Recently, media reports and election results suggest that a new gender divide in political ideology may be emerging among today’s young generation. 15 Is Gen Z more politically divided than previous generations, and do we therefore see a new widening of the gender gap in ideology and vote choice in the 2020s? If so, how does this trend manifest across different countries, and why may this be happening? 1.1.1 The recent Gen Z gender divide Recent reports suggest a growing“Gen Z gender divide” in political behaviour, in voting behaviour, political left-right ideology and political attitudes towards gender equality or feminism. Essentially, this work asks are young men and women today more different in their vote choice or political attitudes than older men and women today, or older men and women when they were young? Some of these reports and research articles suggest that young men and women nowadays are drifting apart in their political views and behaviour – and more so than young men and women of previous generations or older men and women today. Other studies find such patterns in only a few countries or for specific political attitudes, but do not find more general cross-country trends, or trends that would show across several types of political attitudes or behaviour. To date, there is still disagreement in this quickly emerging line of research on whether and to what extent young men and women are drifting substantially apart in their political behaviour and attitudes, and, if so, why this may be happening. In this section, we review existing work on whether and to what extent young men and women today are more strongly diverging in their political behaviour and attitudes, compared to older men and women today and previous generations of young men and women. EqualiZe 19