Marriage and Political Partisanship in Australia: Do Wives' Characteristics Make a Difference?

One of the most contentious issues to emerge out of recent British political sociology is the problem of locating women in the political structure. Using recent Australian data, we examine the `conventional', `dominance', `joint', `cross-class', and `individualistic' approaches to this problem of determining women's political identification. The results suggest that not only are a person's own characteristics important in determining their political partisanship, but wives' characteristics also exert an independent influence on the political choices of their husbands.