Women's Descriptive Representation Research Articles

Empowering women in central banking

ABSTRACT When are women appointed to the board of central banks? While progressive societal gender norms may facilitate women's ascension to leadership positions, recent research indicates that women are more likely to assume leadership positions during crisis periods. Because of the widely documented 'male dominance' in the policy domain of central banking, analyzing changes in women's descriptive representation on central bank boards provides a unique laboratory to study the role of women in economic policymaking. Building on previous literature on women's political leadership, we argue that sovereign debt crises are powerful catalysts for lifting women into leadership positions. We hypothesize that appointing women to central bank leadership positions during sovereign financial distress signals a policy change to bolster monetary policy credibility. Using data covering 90 countries from 2000 to 2017, we show that women are more likely to be appointed to central bank leadership positions during a sovereign debt crisis. A sovereign debt crisis increases the likelihood of women’s appointments to a central bank board by 21.1 percent. To mitigate concerns that our results are spurious, we implement a battery of robustness checks. Our study suggests that women's empowerment can be beneficial in restoring monetary policy credibility during sovereign financial distress.

Representation of women and people of color on nonprofit boards and CEO gender and race

PurposeThis study examines how the representation of women and people of color on nonprofit boards relates to CEO gender and race.Design/methodology/approachThis study uses the 2020 data of 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations in a Southeastern U.S. state. It employs the seemingly unrelated bivariate probit regression to simultaneously estimate the two equations for CEO gender and race.FindingsThe findings show that the proportion of board members of color is positively associated with having a CEO of color and a female CEO. The proportion of female board members is positively associated with having a female CEO, but not with having a CEO of color.Practical implicationsThe lack of a positive connection between women’s representation on the board and having a CEO of color may be attributable to the pervasive and systematic Whiteness in nonprofit leadership. The findings suggest that nonprofit boards reflect on the current executive hiring policies and practices to address existing racial biases or barriers.Originality/valueThis study’s findings reveal that the descriptive representation of women and people of color in the governing board is closely linked to their substantive representation in the form of selecting a woman or a person of color as the CEO. The findings also suggest an interconnection between the representation of people of color on the board and having a female CEO. However, women’s representation on the board is not related to having a CEO of color.

The Effects of Electoral Violence on Women’s Legislative Representation

Despite the global expansion in women’s access to political leadership in recent decades, female parliamentarians remain a distinct minority in most national legislatures. Previous studies have linked variations in women’s descriptive representation to international and domestic security threats, such as interstate war and transnational terrorist campaigns. However, existing research has thus far overlooked how the turbulence, unrest, and violence often associated with the election process itself may produce gendered electoral outcomes. I argue that violent contention in the period immediately preceding elections introduces gendered distortions to the political recruitment process that determines the gender composition of legislatures. The cumulative effect of these distortions is a reduction in the proportion of legislative seats subsequently held by women. To evaluate my hypothesis, I analyze data from 620 nominally competitive legislative elections in 128 countries between 1990 and 2012. Consistent with expectations, the results suggest that higher levels of election-related violence are associated with lower rates of women's descriptive representation.

POLITICAL REPRESENTATION OF WOMEN IN PARLIAMENT: A LITERATURE REVIEW AND FUTURE RESEARCH OPPORTUNITIES

Over the past twenty-five years, gender and politics scholars have engaged in extensive theoretical and empirical discussions about women’s political representation. This article provides a comprehensive literature review of these studies. This study is divided into three themes: descriptive representation of women, substantive representation of women, and the correlation between descriptive and substantive representation of women. The literature review method is carried out by exploring and compiling studies on women’s political representation from various countries, classifying them based on specific topics, and mapping out what has been explored in these studies. The results of the study show that most of the research on women’s political representation is in the realm of women’s descriptive representation, which generally discusses the factors that affect the level of women’s political representation, obstacles and challenges in women’s political representation and the strategies used by women candidates in electoral politics. Meantime, studies on women’s substantive representation still need to be explored, especially in the context of countries in Asia, especially Indonesia. Then, studies on the relationship between descriptive and substantive representations of women show two debate patterns. Some experts believe a positive correlation exists between increasing the number of women’s representation and its substantive effect. Some others find no correlation between the descriptive and substantive representations of women.

Women's Descriptive Representation in Burundi: The Mixed Effects of Gender Quotas

Building on original data collected for the period between 2001 and 2020, this article contributes to the research on the effectiveness of gender quotas. It does so, first, by looking into the salience of ministerial portfolios allocated to women, and, secondly, by examining the spillover effect of the gender quotas in positions where they do not apply. We find that the implementation of gender quotas gradually resulted in women being assigned to high-salience ministerial portfolios. Also, gender quotas have produced mixed results in positions where they are not mandated. These findings can be explained mobilising a multi-perspectival argument that takes into account the history of gender quotas adoption in Burundi, the specific political context of their implementation, as well as an interpersonal resources perspective.

Democratizing urban governance through mayoral term limits: Quasi-experimental evidence from a reform in Chilean municipalities

Term limits on elected mayors are often advocated because they eliminate the incumbency advantage and promote higher representativeness and citizen participation through a more open and reinvigorated electoral competition in local governments. We examine whether key dimensions of local democracy (election competitiveness, turnout, invalid voting, descriptive representation of women) are affected by the imposition of term limits. This article uses a quasi-experimental technique (difference-in-differences design) which leverages a unique and rare institutional reform in Chile that exogenously imposed term limits on some - but not all - mayors in 2020. The as-good-as random assignment of municipalities to either group allows to exploit comparisons which yield robust causal estimates. The overall contribution of term limits to local democracy has been positive because they promote electoral competition, the emergence of female candidates and voter participation, as well as reduce invalid voting rates.

How gender shapes the experience of running for office: A comparative study of women and men candidates from Bolivia's local and national elections (2020−2021)

Are the experiences of running for political office affected by the candidate's gender? In order to address why there might be gender imbalances in the election of political representatives, it is imperative to study the process by which they are selected and elected. Latin America is an important region to study because women's representation increased significantly over the past decades due to quota laws. These laws have been introduced as a solution for women's political underrepresentation. However, despite improving women's descriptive representation by increasing the number of women candidates, it is not clear if quotas have an effect on the selection and campaign experiences of women running for office. Drawing from 36 interviews with women and men candidates for national (with quotas) and local (without quotas) elections in Bolivia, this paper offers evidence of gender’s prevalence in defining how women and men candidates approach and experience the electoral process differently. Regarding candidates' selection, the presence of quotas increases the demand for women, enhancing the value of their particular background. Yet, parties still retain a gate-keeping role over women's candidacies. When they are not forced to nominate women, they tend to select men and prefer women with trajectories similar to their male counterparts. Moreover, quota laws do not reduce voters' gender bias. Women still walk a thin line between the negative and positive consequences of their gender. On the one hand, because they are women, candidates are perceived as transparent and capable of redistributing goods and administrating the economy. On the other hand, contrary to men, women's leadership is constantly questioned. And, as this paper reveals, they even face backlash that stems from other women's wrongdoings.

Can women take the floor in parliament? Evidence from the Spanish lower chamber

Women's numeric representation has increased worldwide, still gender inequalities within parliaments hinder women's chance to effectively conduct legislative work. Despite the varied range of institutional designs aimed at enforcing gender equality in the electoral process in several liberal democracies, the path to gender equality in MP participation is still far from straightforward. The variation in the institutional mechanisms to enforce legal quotas, electoral systems, and party strategies has led to mixed conclusions regarding the relationship between women's descriptive representation and their level of parliamentary work. This article explores to what extent an institutional reform designed to enforce equal gender representation in parliament fosters equality in gender MP participation. To do so, we use individual-level data of the Spanish lower chamber (Congreso de los Diputados) during four legislative terms (2000–2016). The case is relevant because it offers a clear-cut example of the introduction of a legal gender quota for legislative elections in a political system strongly controlled by party organizations.

The substantive and descriptive representation of women in planning: analysis from practice and academia

Planning guides decision making about the built environment that impact people’s lived experiences and as such should include the voices of all those in society. Building on discussions that have been taking place in both practice and academia, this article focuses on the inclusion of women in planning. We draw on four research projects to explore the extent to which women are included within the planning profession and their needs met though the planning system, utilising the conceptual framework of the substantive representation of women as a way of exploring this. The article identifies issues with both the descriptive and substantive representation of women in planning. We conclude with the identification of further research needed.

The quota debate in the Czech Republic and the post-communist legacy

Most countries currently use some type of legislative or voluntary party quota to increase women's descriptive representation. The Czech Republic, however, despite low female parliamentary representation and three unsuccessful legislative proposals, has never adopted any quota mechanism, and all relevant political parties are reluctant to use voluntary party quotas. The aim of this paper is to present the arguments employed in the Czech quota debate and identify the reasons for such attitudes. We study the quota debate based on elite attitudes through media analysis and interviews with politicians from across the political spectrum. We find that most politicians do not support quotas. The quota debate is dominated by liberal individualist discourses of quotas as "offensive and humiliating" and unable to solve the problem of underrepresentation caused by "women's lack of interest in electoral politics". We find that many women politicians internalize the dominant negative quota arguments which prevent them from requesting institutional change and pressing for qouta measures in their own parties. We connect the findings with historical and political experiences that could provide important insights into quota reluctance in other post-communist countries.

The role of women’s descriptive representation on same-gender and proximity voting among women

The article examines the relationship between the descriptive representation of women in political parties and its effect on same-gender and proximity voting among women. In particular, we examine whether women are more likely to support parties that have more women representatives or a woman party leader. We also consider whether women’s descriptive representation in parties may help women cast a vote that better corresponds to their preferences. To answer these questions, we make use of data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems. We analyse respondents’ vote choice in 55 elections across 14 countries. Overall, our results show that the presence of a woman party leader motivates women to support such a party and that it also encourages women to vote for a party closer to their ideological position. The results, however, do not provide strong evidence that the presence of more women representatives in parties also fosters same-gender and proximity voting among women.

Financing Gender Equality

State budgets reflect political priorities, providing a measure of issue relevance over time and comparatively across states. This article offers the first analysis of Länder budgets for women’s policy agencies (WPA) in Germany and Austria between 1991 and 2018. Comparing Länder WPA budgets provides insights into material allocations to, and the conditionality of, gender politics in Germany’s strongly federalized state and Austria’s weak federation. We find that German Länder budgeted for independent WPA earlier than Austrian Länder. However, with the advent of the 1999 Austrian coalition of Christian Democrats and the right-wing Freedom Party, which aimed to dismantle national-level gender policies, Austrian Länder investment in WPA grew to compensate for diminishing federal funds. The party constellation in power mattered more in Austria, but in both countries the parties in power were more important for WPA financing than the descriptive representation of women in Länder parliaments.

Teacher Political Candidacy and the Gender Composition of State Legislatures

In this article, we examine the extent to which women teachers ran for state legislative office in 2018, where they won, and the degree to which they contributed to the surge of women representatives elected in state legislatures around the country. We engaged in a comprehensive effort to collect information on all of the teacher candidates who ran for seats in state legislatures during the 2018 midterm elections. We found that 430 teacher candidates ran for a state legislative office. These candidates were fairly evenly split between men (51%) and women (49%), and tended to reflect the racial demographics of the teaching profession. Most teacher candidates ran as Democrats (69%) and 33% came from the six states that experienced teacher walkouts during spring 2018. We found that men and women teacher candidates were similarly likely to win the general election, but due to the higher proportion of women teacher candidates running relative to the men-dominated composition of state legislatures, the teacher candidates contributed to the increase in the descriptive representation of women in state legislatures after the 2018 midterm elections. Women teacher candidates won 61 seats in the 2018 midterm elections, which represents about 3% of the 1839 seats won by women in state legislatures in 2018. Although our work focuses on only a single election cycle, if teacher candidacy is a growing trend, then political engagement from the women-dominated profession of teaching may create new growth in the number of women lawmakers in the United States.

Women’s Underrepresentation in German Politics—Reforms and Reform Needs Based on the Local Level

In Germany, the representation of women at all federal levels in parliament has been stagnating for decades. This is mainly due to the personalized proportional representation system and the inconsistent voluntary party quotas, some of which are not very binding. The objective of this research is to subject the German Politics to critical analysis from the perspective of women’s representation and participation at all levels of Government. The paper relied on secondary source of information viz. Journal articles etc. After Angela Merkel’s resignation, it became even clearer that the underrepresentation of women at the top of the government was even greater than in the parliaments. At municipal level, the proportion of women in mayoral offices in Germany stagnates at 10%. This is mainly because, firstly, the larger parties hardly have any women and, depending on the path, the mostly male incumbents are usually re-elected. If the major parties nominate female mayoral candidates, they are also in a difficult starting position. They either must compete against incumbents or in the diaspora of the parties, which significantly reduces the chances of an election victory. With institutional solutions such as term limits in mayoral elections and cumulation and splitting (open list election) combined with legal quotas for female candidates in parliamentary elections at all federal levels, the descriptive representation of women in German politics could be significantly increased.

Descriptive representation of women in international courts

Descriptive representation of women in international courts

The Descriptive Representation of Women in the 9th European Parliament

The European Parliament is often praised for its gender-equal composition and its high descriptive representation of women. However, there is a remarkable gender gap between the representation of women at the national and European level, and it is debated how these variations can be explained. After discussing theories of representation and reviewing data from the European Parliament on the share of women in national delegations and the political groups in the 9th European Parliament after Brexit, this paper evaluates whether institutional and contextual factors can explain the gender gap between the national and supranational level. It argues that the representation of women cannot be sufficiently explained by the institutional rules. Instead, ambitious national rules in some member states and the parties’ role as gatekeepers can explain the high representation of women. These findings have implications for promoting gender equality in politics in the EU.

Breaking the glass ceiling: the role of the UN and the EU in promoting women in politics

Politics has traditionally been reserved for men, meaning it has been very difficult‎ for women to enter at the highest level. The progress in gender equality‎ in politics has been uneven so far and significant differences exist among‎ states and regions. The male dominance in state politics has translated into the‎ international realm in international entities and multilateral political platforms‎ as well. Although these entities gradually introduced the principles of gender‎ equality and promoted an increased participation of women in political life in‎ their constituent states through key documents, they face the same problem –‎ how to ensure at least a formal and descriptive representation of women at the‎ highest level and how to translate stated or symbolic gender equality from key‎ documents into practice (symbolic to substantive representation). The aim of‎ this paper is to give an overview of the historical development of the international‎ framework for the equal participation of women in politics. Particularly,‎ this paper analyses how two international entities – the UN and the EU – contribute‎ to overcoming the gender-gap in politics, and whether their activities‎ have influenced an increased participation of women in politics (descriptive‎ representation).‎

Legislated candidate quotas and women's descriptive representation in preferential voting systems

AbstractRecent decades have seen a worldwide diffusion of electoral gender quotas, an institution designed to enhance women's political representation. This has sparked scholars’ interest in the actual effects of quotas, including their impact on female descriptive (numeric) representation in national legislatures. As with many other issues within the domain of comparative politics, however, establishing causality with respect to the effect of quota laws is intrinsically difficult. In this article, we attempt to overcome these difficulties. We apply the generalised synthetic control method to study the impact of legislated candidate quotas on the descriptive parliamentary representation of women in three European countries: Belgium, Greece and Poland. As these states elect their national parliaments by means of variants of a proportional representation system with preferential voting for candidates, we compare their levels of female descriptive representation to a set of corresponding figures observed for a ‘synthetic control’ unit, comprising 16 European countries that implement fundamentally similar electoral systems but do not have legislated candidate quotas in place. The quota effects that we obtain vary substantially among the three cases analysed. The apparent effect for Belgium is strong, while much weaker effects are observed for the two other states. Relying on the extant literature, we qualitatively interpret these results, putting forward a number of conjectures as to how contextual factors can contribute to the strength and persistence of quota effects. We conclude that the impact of legislated candidate quotas is essentially limited, albeit it may be magnified under favourable contextual conditions, such as those which occurred in Belgium.

The Effects of Women's Descriptive Representation on Government Behavior

Does the representation of women in cabinet and party leadership positions affect whether governments are more or less likely to fulfill the policy promises they make during election campaigns? This research note studies the effects of women's descriptive representation in cabinet and party leadership on policymaking by analyzing the pledge fulfillment of parties in 10 European countries, the United States, and Canada. The empirical analysis suggests that governing parties are more likely to fulfill their election promises when levels of women's representation are higher. The results have implications for our understanding of the descriptive and substantive representation of women, as well as for party competition and policymaking more broadly.

Régimen electoral de género y representación política de las mujeres a nivel subnacional en México

In recent decades, Mexico has introduced increasingly strict electoral rules regarding the gender electoral regime, while the descriptive representation of women has been increasing. This article analyzes empirically the relationship between the strength of the gender electoral regime and the descriptive representation of women in local congresses of the 32 states, expanding the longitudinal analysis based on the data of most local legislatures between 1987 and 2019. It aims to identify whether the gender electoral regime of each state has been strengthened (diachronic comparison) and if there is a positive relationship between the strength of the gender electoral regime (synchronous comparison) and the proportion of female legislators in each local congress. The results of this research suggest that the stronger the gender electoral regime, the greater the predicted proportion of women elected by the principles of relative majority and proportional representation, even after controlling for other political and socioeconomic factors. The results also illustrate that the effect of the gender electoral regime index is not homogeneous among sub-national entities.