Women vote conservative?

While reading about the 1970 elections in Chile for an assignment I read that significantly more women voted for the conservative candidate than men (men and women had to vote in different places). The conservative Alessandri got 38,4% of the vote under women, and 31,5% under men while Salvador Allende got 30,5% of the female vote and no less than 41,6% of the male vote (the leftist Christian Democrat Party candidate Tomic got 29,9% from women and 25,6% from men). From an assignment I wrote some years ago I remember that something similar happened in the 1988 elections in Mexico: men voting for the leftist C�rdenas and women for the rightist Salinas.

A few months ago I saw an exposition in the regional museum in Guadalajara about the history of women's rights in Mexico. After the Mexican Revolution the alleged conservatism of women was used as an argument not to grant them suffrage, because 'if we did that we could just as well hand over power to the church immediately'. In fact in 1939 the Mexican government was about to introduce female suffrage when the conservative Almaz�n announced his candidacy for next year's elections, after which it was decided not to introduce female suffrage so the victory of the 'official' candidate would not become endangered (only in 1953 female suffrage was introduced on a national level). Of course there was also opposition to this kind of reasoning, most notably from Felipe Carrillo Puerto, governor of Yucat�n in the early 1920's. He argued the conservatism of most women was the fault of their men and female relatives, who did not allow them enough education and did not educate them about their own progressive ideals. In 1922 he introduced female suffrage in Yucat�n and that year his sister together with two other women were the first women elected to the Mexican congress.

There are two things I wonder about:
1. Is this a typically Latin American phenomenon or is it worldwide?
2. What could be the reason?

Originally posted by Mixcoatl After the Mexican Revolution the alleged conservatism of women was used as an argument not to grant them suffrage, because 'if we did that we could just as well hand over power to the church immediately'.

I heard the same thing about France around WWII, the Socialist government didn't want to grant suffrage to women because they thought it would doom them at the polls.

Strange, here in Canada I feel like the stereotype is that men are the conservative ones.  However we're not a very religious society-- in some places the women stay at home and pray and the men go out to work, so maybe that's why.

I've read a few things about the refusal of the socialist government in France to grant suffrage to women in 1936. I think to a large extent, in this specific case but I guess the same reasoning can be applied in South America, women were more religious and in these days the catholic hierarchy was violently anti-left.

I was just looking at the gender division of votes in France for the presidential elections from 1965 to 2007 and some trend appear clearly:
- Women are more keen to vote for another woman than men are (confermed by Hilary's polls right now).
- Women do not vote as much as men for the extremes (often a difference in total extreme left and extreme right of more than 10%).
- Women tend to vote more for conservative candidates.
- Women tend to favour the candidate (even if leftist) who is the currant PM or preseident.