Yes, look at papers from The Hunger Project (funny name, they are in political empowerment of women in India, Mexico, and the US).

In Germany they're doing a representative "youth survey" once in 4 years and that one always contains a couple of questions concerning political interest, opinion and participation. They usually find that boys / young men are a little bit more interested in politics and more willing to participate politically, but it depends on the kind of political participation also. Girls / young women are often willing to join e.g. welfare organisations, environmental organizations etc. and young men often seem to be more willing to participate in demonstrations. I'd imagine that these kind of surveys are conducted in a lot of countries!

Yes, I think there should be a lot on it out there. Both women's/gender studies and political science/public affairs folks are interested in this.

Try the United Nations

www.unwomen.org/

I also think the US Dept. of State might have info about different countries, so you might contact them, or at least go to their website.

Although the following are based in the United States, they are likely concerned with a variety of social/cultural/ethnic groups within and outside the US.....

Rutgers University's Center for American Women and Politics

www.cawp.rutgers.edu/

You may also want to look websites for universities with big gender studies schools (I'm not sure which those are) and public affairs schools like Syracuse U's Maxwell School or Harvard's Kennedy School.

Another idea is to contact the National Women's Political Caucus: www.nwpc.org/ ; the American Association of University Women: www.aauw.org/ ; and the National Organization for Women: www.now.org/.

Search the following article it maybe interesting:

The Political Gender Gap: Gender Bias in Facial Inferences that Predict Voting Behavior

Joan Y. Chiao1,2*, Nicholas E. Bowman2, Harleen Gill1,3

Thank you everybody for your contributions :)

Http://www.ipsnews.net/2008/10/politics-namibia-gender-equality-making-the-numbers-count/

Thank you Moses too

In India women got reservations in three tire system of local self governance almost a decade back . Still the observations shows that there is gender pattern of political participation. There are some studies conducted in India about women's experiences about political participation.

I have observed that there is lot of difference in the dynamics of contesting elections, the issues raised by women and men, the strategies to dialogue with the voters [In India the women adopt very culture specific strategies] , the experiences women get in the elected houses etc.

Many Ph. D. scholars also have worked on these issues.

dr. anjali kulkarni,Pune India

My own research compared gender differences in political behaviour village level and it was found that elected women heads were more inclined to take up development and empowerment related projects while men were more into development and infrastructure related projects. My paper is published. the ref is "Agrawal M. (2006) women in grassroot democracy: In a book “Participatory citizenship: Identity, Inclusion, Exclusion” edited by Ranjita Mohanty and published by Sage Publications,"

See Naked Truth: Strip Clubs, Democracy, and a Christian Right (University of Texas Press, 2012) based on 15 years of research across the US as an expert court witness in First, Fifth, Fourteenth Amendment, labor, tax, and murder cases related to female dancers.

Absolutely fascinating and informative. My thanks to all of you.

This is more a political science idea: There are differences in the party preference by genders. As green parties are prefered by women (at least in Germany) some conservative parties as well as traditional socialists have less women in higher positions.

It would be interesting to do research on the basis of programatic distinction of genders.

(This goes even farer: There is a lose tie of the left-right-metaphor and the men-women-difference. Left is more associated with women (they sat on the left side in the church) and men with 'right' (they sat on the right side of the king). The tie to political programatics is lose, but it is there, I would say.)