Empowering Participation: Examining Women’s Access to Formal Financial Resources and Women’s National Parliamentary Representation

Women’s access to financial resources is popularly hailed and strongly evidenced to be a development tool that champions women’s economic empowerment. Globally, does economic empowerment through women’s access to formal financial resources translate to women’s political empowerment in established political institutions? To what extent do women’s use of formal financial resources (defined as use of financial and savings accounts, credit cards, and the taking of loans from financial institution) correlate with women’s political representation in national parliaments? The purpose of this thesis is to utilize cross-national data to investigate this question by examining the extent to which women’s access to formal financial services is correlated with increased women’s representation in national parliaments. This thesis will utilize data from the World Bank’s “Gender Statistics and Indicators” database from 195 countries around the world to test the existence, direction, and strength of any potential relationship, controlling for important confounding variables. (World Bank, 2013) Statistically significant relationships that emerge will then be analyzed in the context of other scholarly works to draw conclusions, discuss policy implications, and suggest areas for further investigation.