Do female/male distinctions in language matter? Evidence from gender political quotas

Abstract

This article studies the determinants of gender political quota and enforcement sanctions, two key policy instruments for increasing female participation in politics. We find a novel empirical fact: language (the pervasiveness of gender distinctions in grammar) is the most significant related variable to quota adoption, more than traditional explanations such as economic development, political system and religion.

Keywords:

• culture
• development
• gender quotas, grammar
• language

JEL Classification:

• K0
• 017
• Z1

Acknowledgements

All authors equally contributed. Thanks to the participants of the ITFA 2012 and RES 2012 conferences, PSE, College of Management Academic studies Business School and THEMA seminars, Temple University Brown Bag Seminar and to Barry Eichengreen, Ramon Ferrer-i-Cancho, Johanna Nichols and Gerard Roland. We thank Sangmook Lee for excellent research assistance and Ceressec ESSEC for funding support.

Notes

¹ Data for De_Jure_Quota and De_Facto_Quota are taken from quotaproject.org.

² ‘Eng_col’, ‘Fren_col’ and ‘Spa_col’ stand for British, French and Spanish colonization, respectively.

³ Robust to varying window length.