IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/intorg/v65y2011i01p103-137_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

International Politics and the Spread of Quotas for Women in Legislatures

Author

Listed:
  • Bush, Sarah Sunn

Abstract

Quotas to promote women's representation in the world's legislatures have spread to more than one hundred countries. The diffusion of gender quotas poses a puzzle since they have often been adopted in countries where women have low status. International influence and inducements best explain quota adoption in developing countries. Promoting gender equality, including through gender quotas, has become a key part of international democracy promotion. The international legitimacy of gender quotas leads them to be adopted through two causal pathways: directly, through postconflict peace operations, and indirectly, by encouraging countries, especially those that depend on foreign aid, to signal their commitment to democracy by adopting quotas. An event history analysis, which controls for other relevant factors, shows that the hypothesized relationships exist. Further support comes from a process-tracing analysis of Afghanistan's 2004 quota.

Suggested Citation

  • Bush, Sarah Sunn, 2011. "International Politics and the Spread of Quotas for Women in Legislatures," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 65(1), pages 103-137, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:intorg:v:65:y:2011:i:01:p:103-137_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0020818310000287/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Adam Michael Auerbach & Adam Ziegfeld, 2016. "How Do Electoral Quotas Influence Political Competition? Evidence from Municipal, State, and National Elections in India," Working Papers 2016-16, The George Washington University, Institute for International Economic Policy.
    2. Doaa Althalathini & Haya Al-Dajani & Nikolaos Apostolopoulos, 2022. "The Impact of Islamic Feminism in Empowering Women’s Entrepreneurship in Conflict Zones: Evidence from Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 178(1), pages 39-55, June.
    3. Kikuta,Kyosuke, 2023. "More Equality for Women Does Mean Less War: Descriptive Representation, Legislative Votes, and International Conflict," IDE Discussion Papers 904, Institute of Developing Economies, Japan External Trade Organization(JETRO).
    4. Moro, Andrea & Wisniewski, Tomasz Piotr & Mantovani, Guido Massimiliano, 2017. "Does a manager's gender matter when accessing credit? Evidence from European data," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 119-134.
    5. Radeef Chundakkadan & Subash Sasidharan, 2022. "Gender gap and access to finance: A cross‐country analysis," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(1), pages 180-207, February.
    6. Mascia, Danilo V. & Rossi, Stefania P.S., 2017. "Is there a gender effect on the cost of bank financing?," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 136-153.
    7. Aili Mari Tripp, 2023. "The Instrumentalization of Women Opposition Leaders for Authoritarian Regime Entrenchment: The Case of Uganda," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 11(1), pages 152-163.
    8. Rustagi, Niharika & Opoku, Eric Evans Osei & Acheampong, Alex O., 2024. "Does gender diversity in politics improve access to electricity and electrification inequality? A global analysis," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 131(C).
    9. Amanda Murdie & Dursun Peksen, 2015. "Women’s rights INGO shaming and the government respect for women’s rights," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 10(1), pages 1-22, March.
    10. Monten, Jonathan, 2013. "Intervention, Aid, and Institution-Building in Iraq and Afghanistan: A Review and Critique of Comparative Lessons," WIDER Working Paper Series 108, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    11. Rustagi, Niharika & Akter, Sonia, 2022. "The impact of women's political representation on child health outcomes during 1990–2020: Evidence from a global dataset," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 312(C).
    12. Goel, Rajeev K. & Nelson, Michael A., 2023. "Women’s political empowerment: Influence of women in legislative versus executive branches in the fight against corruption," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 45(1), pages 139-159.
    13. Jonathan Monten, 2013. "Intervention, Aid, and Institution-Building in Iraq and Afghanistan: a Review and Critique of Comparative Lessons," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2013-108, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    14. Suárez Sandra L., 2015. "Reflections on a “Heavenly Chorus [that] Sings with a Strong [Male] Upper Class Accent”," Business and Politics, De Gruyter, vol. 17(1), pages 161-175, April.
    15. Laura Huber & Sabrina Karim, 2018. "The internationalization of security sector gender reforms in post-conflict countries," Conflict Management and Peace Science, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 35(3), pages 263-279, May.
    16. Yoshiki Yamagata & Jue Yang & Joseph Galaskiewicz, 2017. "State power and diffusion processes in the ratification of global environmental treaties, 1981–2008," International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 17(4), pages 501-529, August.
    17. Kim, Jessica & Fallon, Kathleen M., 2023. "Making Women Visible: How Gender Quotas Shape Global Attitudes toward Women in Politics," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 19(4), pages 981-1006.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:intorg:v:65:y:2011:i:01:p:103-137_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/ino .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.