The Increasing Effectiveness of National Gender Quotas, 1990–2010

National gender quotas—policies that require a certain percentage of women candidates or legislators—are becoming more effective over time. Using data on 145 countries from 1990 to 2010, we document this trend with latent growth‐curve models. Part of the explanation for increasing effectiveness is that countries have ratcheted up targets for women's inclusion and that quotas are increasingly written in ways that make them more effective at achieving stated goals. Activists, political elites, and policy makers have learned over time which quota policies are most effective, resulting in quotas with provisions that more often lead to success. But, changes in rules alone do not account for the increasing effectiveness of quotas over time. It appears that changing norms about women's incorporation in politics are also increasing quota effectiveness regardless of policy design.     

Quotas: changing the way things look without changing the way things are

This paper argues that while quotas can quite easily be used rapidly to address the problem of insufficient numbers of women in representative political institutions, effective representation requires us to pay attention to far more than merely the numbers of women present. This article suggests that, in particular, we need to look at which kinds of women are made present by quotas, how these women gain office and what they do once they are there. Using the South African example as a case in point, the paper suggests that where women become representatives through mechanisms controlled by party political hierarchies rather than by way of more broad-based political processes reflecting real social change, quotas can act to legitimate and perpetuate women's actual absence of power rather than being an effective remedy.     

Women in parliament: assessing the effectiveness of gender quotas in Poland

Gender quotas aim to increase women’s parliamentary representation. However, the effectiveness of quotas varies. This article explores this issue further by examining the case of Poland, where gender quotas were introduced in 2011. The Polish case presents an interesting puzzle. Although the overall number of women candidates increased almost twofold in comparison with the pre-quota period, this translated into only a slight increase in the number of women deputies in 2011 and 2015. Hence, the impact of quotas was limited. However, the partisan analysis shows that there was a significant variation among individual parties: whereas some parties promoted wholeheartedly women’s access to political office, other parties did not facilitate it. By drawing on rational choice institutionalism, this article shows that institutions and preferences of political parties matter for the effectiveness of gender quotas. In the case of ineffective gender quota policy, political parties have a final say in women’s parliamentary representation.     

Explaining Women's Legislative Representation in Sub‐Saharan Africa

This study examines the relative impacts of social, economic, cultural, and political determinants on women's legislative representation in sub‐Saharan Africa by using an ordinary least squares multiple regression model. Under study are sub‐Saharan African countries that held democratic legislative elections between January 1990 and June 30, 2001. Only the latest election in each country is included for analysis. My study finds that patriarchal culture, proportional representation systems, and gender quotas are statistically significant. This study, by focusing on sub‐Saharan Africa, fills a gap in the extant literature, which has focused on women's legislative representation in advanced industrialized democracies.     

Women's Substantive Representation: Defending Feminist Interests or Women's Electoral Preferences?

To what extent does the inclusion of marginalised groups in policymaking institutions influence policy outcomes? This article examines whether and under which conditions female legislators are more likely to represent women's interests compared with male legislators. Building on the literature on women's substantive representation, it is argued that the advocacy of women's interests by female representatives depends on a number of factors, namely party affiliation, contact with women's organisations, electoral district, and seniority. This argument is evaluated using vote-level fixed-effect models based on a unique data set from a direct democratic context that combines representatives' voting behaviour, women's voting preferences, and recommendations from feminist groups. The findings show that female legislators defend feminist interests more than their male colleagues but that they only marginally respond to women's electoral preferences. Moreover, gender has its most visible effect within the populist party.     

Elected Bodies: The Gender Quota Law for Legislative Candidates in Mexico

In the past decade, 21 countries have adopted gender quota laws that require between 20% and 50% of all legislative candidates to be women. What explains the adoption of these laws? I argue that three factors make politicians more likely to adopt gender quota laws. First, electoral uncertainty creates an opportunity for internal party reform that factions within a party can exploit to their advantage. Second, the courts play an important role because of the centrality of the issue of equal protection under the law to gender quotas. Finally, cross‐partisan mobilization among female legislators raises the costs of opposing such legislation by drawing public attention to it. I examine these three claims with regard to Mexico, where the federal congress passed a 30% gender quota law in 2002. I'd give up my seat for you if it wasn't for the fact that I'm sitting in it myself. —Groucho Marx (quoted in Abdela 2001) [Many Latin American countries] have ‘homosexual’ political systems, that is, the power of the political parties and the state is in the hands of only one of the sexes.… —Line Bareiro, Paraguayan feminist (Bareiro and Soto 1992, 11)     

Undermining Gender Equality: Female Attrition from Private Law Practice

The number of women in the legal profession has grown tremendously over the last 40 years, with women now representing about half of all law school graduates. Despite the decades‐long pipeline of women into the profession, women's representation among law firm partnerships remains dismally low. One key reason identified for women's minority presence among law firm partners is the high level of attrition of women associates from law firms. This high rate of female attrition undermines efforts to achieve gender equality in the legal profession. Using a survey of 1,270 law graduates, we employ piecewise constant exponential hazard regression models to explore gendered career paths from private law practice. Our analysis reveals that, for both men and women, the time leading up to partnership decisions sees many lawyers exit private practice, but women continue to leave private practice long after partnership decisions are made. Gender differences in leaving private practice also surface with reference to cohorts, areas of law, billable hours, firm sizes, and career gaps. Notably, working in criminal law augmented women's risk of leaving private practice, but not for men, while taking time away from practice for reasons other than parental leaves, hastens both men's and women's exits from private practice.     

Concepts of Representation and the Passage of the Sex Discrimination (Election Candidates) Bill

The Sex Discrimination (Election Candidates) Bill was introduced to the House of Commons in October 2001, gaining Royal Assent in February 2002. The Bill followed the decrease in the numbers of women elected in the 2001 General Election. It permits political parties to introduce positive action in the selection of candidates. The Bill received cross party support and had an easy passage through both Houses of Parliament. Informed by feminist concepts of representation this article examines the arguments employed by MPs and Peers in support of the legislation. Arguments associated with the claim that women have a different political style received little support. There was greater discussion of, and support for, arguments based on symbolic representation and substantive representation, although many MPs were reluctant to make the strong claim that women's substantive representation is dependent upon women's presence. However, the most widely supported argument in favour of the Bill was the justice argument, namely, that women are currently being denied equal opportunities in the parties' selection processes.     

Sisters in Terrorism? Exploding Stereotypes

New Terrorism is increasingly deploying women in the field as combatants. Female suicide bombers have proven to be highly effective, precisely because of the persistence of gender stereotypes in target societies. Women terrorists convey a powerful message of political seriousness, heighten the sense of intimidation and threat, and attract greater mass media attention—all key strategic objectives of New Terrorism. Gender stereotypes are also at work in explanations for women's recourse to terrorist activism. Such stereotypes simplify complex motivations and either overvalue or undervalue women's agency. The net result of this stereotyping is that women end up worse off individually and collectively, domestically and internationally. The lives of women in geopolitical hotspots have become more precarious, and the valorization of women terrorists undermines the quest for women's emancipation in fundamentalist cultures. In Western democracies, paternalistic outrage at women's subordination under fundamentalist regimes may have initially served as a dubious justification for military and other interventions, but the involvement of women in terrorist activism now risks reinforcing an even more dangerous “clash of civilizations” thinking. One effect is to undermine the demands for greater gender equality in Western democracies as well as indirectly support the war on women political agenda domestically.     

Will She Stay or Will She Go? Career Ceilings and Women's Retirement from the U.S. Congress

This article offers the first broad‐based, systematic, times‐series assessment of the gender dynamics underlying congressional retirement. We extend the body of work on gender and representation by using the congressional retirement literature to develop an argument that accounts for the gender gap in the average length of congressional service. Our results indicate that women are less willing than men to remain in Congress when their ability to influence the legislative agenda stalls. Because of women's relatively early departures from the House of Representatives, our analysis suggests that prospects for women's representation are less promising than the conventional wisdom suggests.     

To object or not to object: The question of women judges in Egypt

Developing countries where women have not been permitted into the judiciary are excluded from feminist scholarship on women and the law. Such exclusion limits comparative views to a specific cultural‐historical domain. This paper explores the case of Egypt, where women have not entered the judiciary, in an attempt to extend the cross‐cultural discussion. A premise of the paper is that a theological vision of women's gender roles, which is qualitatively different from the prevailing one in the West, is a strong influencing factor on women's access to the judiciary in Egypt. After presenting a brief overview of women's status in Islam, this paper explores perspectives on women's role as judges within Islamic Shari'a. Building on the brief exploration of Islam's views regarding women's access to the judiciary, this paper then presents contemporary debates regarding women as judges in the Egyptian case. A recommendation for a more careful examination of the theological influences on the Egyptian debate regarding women's access to the judiciary concludes the paper.     

Gender and Publication Patterns: Female Authorship Is Increasing,But Is There Gender Parity?

Women's authorship has historically been underrepresented in criminal justice publications. The current study updates previous research by examining the authorship patterns of articles published in 8 criminological journals spanning 2007 to 2013. Women's representation increased from earlier rates but remained below that of their male contemporaries. This growth corresponded with general trends of increasing coauthorship, suggesting that the recent gains in women's representation do not indicate decreases in gender disparities. Men also were more likely to have sole-authored articles and be lead authors in papers coauthored by men and women. In addition, the vast majority of articles included at least 1 male author, and far fewer included a female giving men a larger visual presence. Gender representation also varied considerably between mainstream/traditional journals and 2 gender-specialized journals.     

Bridging the Gender Gap In Bill Sponsorship

Under what circumstances do men sponsor issues that are traditionally regarded as salient primarily to women? By examining the sponsorship of legislation in the upper and lower chambers of 15 state legislatures in 2001, we explored the conditions under which men are likely to focus attention on policy areas involving women's issues and children's issues. We found little effect of institutional context (such as party control of the legislature or diversity within the legislature) on the sponsorship behavior of either men or women. Personal characteristics such as race, education, age, and family circumstances are associated with sponsorship by men, but not by women. Committee service is also strongly associated with sponsorship behavior, particularly for men. Differences in sponsorship are relatively marked in the sponsorship of legislation that focuses on reproduction or other health issues particularly relevant to women. We conclude that the boundaries of the set of issues traditionally defined as “women's issues” may be changing over time and that it is important to recognize that the influences on the sponsorship of women's issues can be different for men than they are for women.     

The Global Adoption of National Policies Protecting Children from Violent Discipline in Schools and Homes, 1950–2011

With a focus on the relationship between women's and children's rights and theories of globalization, we conduct an event history analysis of more than 150 countries between 1950 and 2011 to assess the factors associated with policies banning corporal punishment in schools and homes. Our research reveals that formal condemnation of corporal punishment in schools is becoming a global norm; policies banning corporal punishment in the home, in contrast, are being adopted more slowly. We find that the percentage of women in parliament is associated with the adoption of anti‐corporal punishment policies in both schools and homes, suggesting a nexus between women's and children's issues. Countries with more ethnic diversity are slower to adopt home policies, however. We propose that minority groups in these countries may be resistant to laws because of the risk of selective or prejudicial enforcement. In terms of globalization, more aid is associated with both school and home policies, and countries that have ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child are more likely to adopt home policies. Surprisingly, international nongovernmental organizations are not significantly associated with either type of policy adoption.     

Women's Rights Issues Among Bombay Parsis: A Legal Anthropologist's Thoughts on Mitra Sharafi's Law and Identity in Colonial South Asia

I focus in this essay on legal issues related to women's rights in the British colonial period that are discussed in Mitra Sharafi's 2014 book, Law and Identity in Colonial South Asia: Parsi Legal Culture, 1772–1947. Beginning in the early nineteenth century, the Parsi leadership actively lobbied for laws related to intestate inheritance, women's property rights, divorce, and child marriage that were consistent with their community's customary values and practices. During the same period, legal reform movements were also underway on behalf of Hindu and Muslim women and, to a lesser extent, Christian women. This essay highlights some of the common themes in those movements and discusses, in particular, the similarities and differences in what was achieved for Parsi women and their Hindu sisters, as they and their respective male leaders traversed the road toward greater gender equality under the law.     

Proportional Representation and Female Parliamentarians

This article asks, “What effect does the choice of a nation's electoral system have on the gender composition of its parliament over time?” I find that the electoral system has an important part to play, but previous work has overstated, by factors of between two and three, how much of a difference an electoral system can make. This article contributes an updated nonlinear theory of female representation, an improved dataset on women's representation across space and time, and more modern statistical techniques than previously used in research on this question.     

Candidate Selection in British Second Order Elections: A Comparison of Electoral System and Party Strategy Effects

Whilst most UK political parties have now accepted the need to increase the number of women representatives, the stark reality is that women remain under-represented. The under-representation of women in UK politics is not just evident in the national legislature but is a pattern repeated, to varying degrees, in second order elections at local, devolved and European levels. Recent developments in political recruitment processes allow us to explore the extent to which political parties take advantage of different electoral systems to promote women candidates in second order elections. Providing analysis of (s)election data from across second order elections, this article explores the interaction between systemic and institutional strategies, questioning which combination of electoral system and party strategy is most beneficial for increasing levels of women's representation.