Gender equality in politics at home and promotion of gender equality in politics abroad: The role of bilateral official development assistance

Abstract

Does gender equality in politics in donor countries affect the allocation to recipient countries of official development assistance in support of gender equality in politics? Since the 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and the launch of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals in 2000, gender equality has been underscored as an important development goal for donors. We hypothesize that donors with higher levels of gender equality in politics are likely to allocate more aid to recipients with lower levels of gender equality in politics to promote the equality in politics in those countries. We expect this positive relationship to be even more significant after the launch of the Millennium Development Goals. Using a time-series cross-sectional design covering country dyads for the period, 1990–2012, we find evidence supporting our hypotheses.