Women in cabinets

Abstract

There is still relatively little research on what factors explain the share of women in cabinets across countries and time. Focusing on party ideology, we advance this budding research. First, we examine if heads of government from left-leaning and/or liberal parties tend to select a larger proportion female cabinet members than those from conservative parties. Second, we evaluate whether a switch toward a left-leaning or liberal government benefits women’s cabinet presence. We test both propositions empirically with a data set covering mainly Western and industrialized countries after 1968. Our statistical analysis only find lukewarm support for the first proposition, that is, left-wing parties are no longer more likely to nominate women to cabinet posts than other party families, particularly liberal parties. Rather, what we do find is that a change in government, regardless of whether the new formateur is left-wing, liberal, or conservative, benefits the nomination of women to cabinet posts.