According to new research, however, daughters have an even more profound effect on their daddies: fathers, say Professor Andrew Oswald, from Warwick University, and Dr Nattavudh Powdthavee, of York University, will shift their political allegiance for their daughters. Using research from the British Household Panel Survey, the two economists found that the more daughters there are in a household, the more likely their father is to vote Labour or Liberal Democrat.

In an unpublished article that has been submitted to an economics journal, the pair state: "This paper provides evidence that daughters make people more leftwing, while having sons, by contrast, makes them more rightwing." The academics go on to speculate that leftwing families become so through a predominance of females down successive generations, as anecdotally evidenced by Tony Booth and his many daughters, or the late John Smith and his three ....

The researchers have been accused of propagating gender stereotypes and of perpetuating the idea that women go in for softer politics than men. But their work mirrors recent findings by American researchers, who looked at the voting records of US congressmen before and after having children. In a joint paper, sociologist Rebecca Warner from Oregon State University and the economist Ebonya Washington from Yale University found that support for policies designed to address gender equity is greater among parents with daughters. The result, they say, is particularly strong for fathers.