The Effect of Gender Quotas on Women's Political Engagement: Cross-National Comparison and Case Study
Abstract
In this paper I look at the effect of gender quotas on women’s political engagement.
In particular I ask whether the enactment of a gender quota encourages women to become
more involved in politics by sending the signal that politics is not an activity reserved
for men.
The main source of data for the outcome variables is the World Values Survey (WVS)
five wave dataset (1981-2008) that includes surveys conducted in 87 countries, the
total number of respondents is 257,597. The first wave of the WVS was carried out
in 1981, a second wave of the WVS took place in 1990, the third wave took place in
1995, the fourth wave took place in 1999-2000, and the last wave was carried out in
2005-2007.
The final sample is reduced. I selected the countries that provided information of
at least one point in the past before the enactment of the quota and one point after
the enactment of the quota. The treatment group is composed of all those countries
that established a quota at some point during the survey and the control group is
composed of those countries that never established a gender quota. The resulting groups
include 21 countries that have a quota with 88,749 respondents, and 23 countries without
a quota and 76,587 respondents in this group. Countries that score a 3 on Freedom
House’s Freedom in the World Index were also dropped from the dataset.
Data on the independent variable existence of a gender quota was obtained from the
Quota Project as well as secondary sources.
Research Design
In the first part of the analysis I compare differences in women’s political engagement
for countries with a quota and for countries without a quota on five outcomes: discuss
politics with friends, taken political action, signed a petition, participated in
a demonstration and membership in a political party. In this section I assume that
quotas would not have an effect on men and I use them as the control group.
In the second part of the study, I try to estimate the effect of quotas on women’s
political engagement using regression analysis. The model includes country and time
fixed effects and an interaction term (quota*female) to capture the effects of quotas
on women’s political engagement. This model also includes clustered standard errors
at the country level.
Because gender quotas can be established by political parties or legislatures I include
one specification that controls for whether a quota is legislated or not.
As two further specifications I use a fixed effects model to estimate the effects
of quotas only for women and for men.
In the second section of the paper I conduct a case study focused on Argentina to
try to illuminate the different mechanisms that can explain women’s increased levels
of political engagement and the potential effects of gender quotas. In particular,
I focus on three mechanisms: greater visibility of women politicians, importance of
political and economic crises and ripple effects of gender quotas that can explain
increased levels of political engagement for women.
The analysis in this paper does provide conclusive results about the effect of gender
quotas on women’s political engagement. Given the limitations of this study in terms
of data and potential omitted factors in the analysis, the symbolic impact of quotas
needs to be further explored. The case study points out that the enactment of a gender
quota contributes to the visibility of women politicians; it is possible then that
quotas have an indirect effect on women’s political engagement. Quotas also can start
a debate about the role of women in politics and in other institutions that can also
contribute to women’s mobilization and interest in politics. However, there are many
other potential factors that can influence women’s political engagement after the
enactment of a quota and that are not being taken into account in this study. If quotas
were also debated along with other policies that benefit women this could explain
increased levels of women’s political engagement.
Further studies of this phenomenon need to take into account these contextual factors,
as well as others related to the potential effect of political institutions such as
the electoral system on the effect of quotas. Finally, as part of the policy feedbacks
literature, this paper concludes with the idea that there should be further studies
that explore the mechanisms that lead some laws and policies to have feedback effects.
Type
Master's projectDepartment
The Sanford School of Public PolicyPermalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/3620Citation
Laurito, M. Agustina (2011). The Effect of Gender Quotas on Women's Political Engagement: Cross-National Comparison
and Case Study. Master's project, Duke University. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/3620.More Info
Show full item record
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Rights for Collection: Sanford School Master of Public Policy (MPP) Program Master’s Projects
Works are deposited here by their authors, and represent their research and opinions, not that of Duke University. Some materials and descriptions may include offensive content. More info