Recent studies of the gender gap in politics tend to focus on candidate choice rather than registration and turnout. This shift in focus away from gender inequality in political participation may he due to rhe finding in several studies of U. S. voting hehavior since Î980 that différences in rates of registration and voting between men and women are modest and not statistically significant after controlling for traditional predictors of participation. However, we argue that researchers have overlooked the substantial gender gap w registration and voting in the South. While the gender gap in participation virtually disappeared outside the South hy the 1950s, substantial gender differences in ' rates of voter registration and turnout remained in the South throughout the 1950s and l9ñ0s. We test several explanations for the persistence of the gender gap in registration ami voting in the South in the ¡950s and ¡9ôOs and why it began to decline in the 1970s. These explanations include female lahor force participation, resources, mobilization, and political engagement. Using American National Election Studies data for every presidential election year from 1956 to 1980. we employ heteroscedastic probit models within a cross-classifted multilevel age-period-cohort framework to examine the declining gender gap in voter registration and turnout in the South. The results indicate that the decline of the gender gap is due to converging rates of political engagement and employment for women and men in the South during this time period. We conclude with a discussion of the theoretical implications.Sociat Science History .'i4:2 (Summer 2010)

The integration of women and African Americans into the politically active southern electorate in the 1960s and the 1970s was a turning point in the rise of the "New South " and essential to the establishment of a democratic political process in the region. Whereas there are numerous studies of the reenfranchisement of African Americans in the South in the literature, temporal changes in the gender gap in southern political participation have received less attention. Gender inequality in voting has historically been greatest in the South and was more resistant to change over time. This study is the first to examine the intersection of gender and racial inequality in political participation in the South over a period spanning several decades. Building on previous theories of political participation, including the civic voluntarism model and the strategic mobilization perspective, we develop and test a conceptual model based on the interplay between individual characteristics and the broader institutional context. Using data from the American National Election Studies, we examine racial differences in the gender gap in southern political participation over time using hierarchical age-periodcohort analysis. We conclude with a discussion of the theoretical implications for the study of gender and racial inequality in political participation.After Tennessee ratified the Nineteenth Amendment in August 1920, the 36th state to do so, women secured the right to vote in the United States.However, most African American women were still disenfranchised due to Jim Crow-era suffrage restrictions in southern states, and white women