Determinants of Global Peace and Gender Equality as an Invisible Hand: A Cross Country Analysis

Abstract

This study uses a cross sectional data for 115 countries in order to examine the relationship between global peace and gender equality, by using Global Peace Index (GPI) as a dependent variable, and Gender Inequality Index (GII) and Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI) as independent variables. We test whether the gender equality is related to peace and whether the impacts differ when other determinants of peace have taken into consideration. The results suggest that level of gender equality and cohesion are the most robust and significant variables affecting level of peace in a positive way among other control variables. Two indexes have been used as a measure of gender equality in order to check the robustness of the results and the same results and conclusions were obtained from the regressions. Interestingly, the study also finds that income level of the country, as a control variable, is insignificant in all regressions.