Abstract
This article studies the determinants of gender political quota and enforcement sanctions, two key policy instruments for increasing female participation in politics. We find a novel empirical fact: language (the pervasiveness of gender distinctions in grammar) is the most significant related variable to quota adoption, more than traditional explanations such as economic development, political system and religion.
Highlights
Since the UN adopted the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) in 1979, international organizations and domestic demand have increased the pressure to expand women’s political participation
We discovered a novel empirical finding: while economic development, political system and religion are closely related to quota policies, language is the most strongly related variable
We measure the intensity of female/male distinctions in languages grammar by building an index, the ‘Gender Intensity Index’ (GII) based all four grammatical variables that relate to gender included in the World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS; Dryer and Haspelmath, 2011), the most comprehensive source of data on linguistic structures
Summary
Since the UN adopted the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) in 1979, international organizations and domestic demand have increased the pressure to expand women’s political participation. We discovered a novel empirical finding: while economic development, political system and religion are closely related to quota policies, language (the pervasiveness of gender distinctions in grammar) is the most strongly related variable. This article finds that, while traditional explanations such as economic development, religion and political system do matter, grammar is the most strongly related variable to the adoption of quotas.
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