https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2459-972X
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ABSTRACT
That women offer substantive representation in democratic systems is well established. However, can they do so in partial or non-democracies? As less than half of the women in the world live in democracies, analysing female representation outside of the democratic context is crucial. We hypothesize that even in non- and partial-democracies, women exercise substantive representation. Neutralizing the confounding effects of international constraints or a general positive approach towards gender equality, we create a framework that observes the relationship, proposing and testing several scenarios to identify substantive representation. We observe correlations over time between the share of women representatives and policies female representation typically influence: reproductive rights, health spending and education spending. Our evidence shows that substantive representation appears in non- and partial democracies, and not just in democracies.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
ORCID
Aliza Forman-Rabinovici http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2459-972X
Udi Sommer http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9284-5291
Notes
1 Kittilson, “Representing Women”; Waylen, “Enhancing the Substantive Representation of Women”; Dovi, “Preferable Descriptive Representatives”; Devlin and Elgie, “The Effect of Increased Women’s Representation”; Matland, “Women’s Representation”.
2 Freedom House, Freedom in the World.
3 Lust-Okar, “Elections under Authoritarianism”; Levitsky and Way, “Elections Without Democracy”; Diamond, “Thinking about Hybrid Regimes”; Morse, “The Era of Electoral Authoritarianism”; Carothers, “The End of the Transition Paradigm”.
4 Mazur, Theorizing Feminist Policy.
5 Wilson and Woldense, “Contested or Established?”.
6 Greenland, Robins, and Pearl, “Confounding and Collapsibility”; VanderWeele and Shpitser, “On the Definition”.
7 Neumayer, “Do International Human Rights”; Schwarz, “The Paradox of Sovereignty”; Zwingel, “How Do Norms Travel?”.
8 Paxton, “Women in National Legislatures”; Welch and Studlar, “The Opportunity Structure”; Kenworthy and Malami, “Gender Inequality in Political Representation”.
9 Mazur, Theorizing Feminist Policy, 30–31.
10 Clayton and Zetterberg, “Quota Shocks”; Nistotskaya and Stensöta, “Is Women’s Political Representation Beneficial”; Bhalotra and Clots-Figueras, “Health and the Political Agency”; Westfall and Chantiles, “The Political Cure”; Chen, “Do Gender Quotas Influence”.
11 Pitkin, The Concept of Representation.
12 Celis and Childs, “Introduction: The Descriptive and Substantive”.
13 Grey, “Numbers and Beyond”.
14 Krook, Franceschet, and Piscopo, “The Impact of Gender Quotas”; Childs and Lovenduski, “Political Representation”; Pitkin, The Concept of Representation; Schwindt-Bayer and Mishler, “An Integrated Model”.
15 Mansbridge, “Should Blacks Represent Blacks”; Wängnerud, “Women in Parliaments”.
16 See note 12 above.
17 Grey, “Numbers and Beyond”; Dahlerup, “From a Small to a Large Minority”; Childs and Krook, “Should Feminists Give Up”; Wängnerud, “Women in Parliaments”.
18 Diaz, Representing Women?
19 Grey, “Does Size Matter?”; Childs and Withey, “Women Representatives Acting for Women”; Stockemer, “Women’s Parliamentary Representation”; Fallon, Swiss, and Viterna, “Resolving the Democracy Paradox”.
20 Kittilson, “Representing Women”; Paxton, Kunovich, and Hughes, “Gender in Politics”; Htun and Power, “Gender, Parties and Support”; O’Brien, “Gender and Select Committee”; Westfall and Chantiles, “The Political Cure”; Berkman and O’Connor, “Do Women Legislators Matter?”; Chen, “Do Gender Quotas Influence”; Wängnerud, “Testing the Politics of Presence”; Grey, “Does Size Matter”.
21 Svaleryd, “Women’s Representation and Public Spending”; Salahodjaev and Jarilkapova, “Female Parliamentarism and Genuine Savings”.
22 See note 1 above.
23 Swiss, Fallon and Burgos, “Does Critical Mass Matter?”.
24 Bhalotra and Clots-Figueras, “Health and the Political Agency”.
25 Mavisakalyan, “Women in Cabinet and Public Health Spending”.
26 Clayton and Zetterberg, “Quota Shocks”.
27 Nistotskaya and Stensöta, “Is Women’s Political Representation Beneficial”.
28 Tremblay, “Democracy, Representation, and Women”; Liu and Wonjun, Limited Democracy?
29 Stockemer, “Women’s Parliamentary Representation in Africa”.
30 Bystydzienski and Sekhon, Democratization and Women’s Grassroots Movements; Esarey and Schwindt-Bayer, “Estimating Causal Relationships”.
31 Paxton, Hughes, and Painter, “Growth in Women’s Political Representation”; Fallon, Swiss, and Viterna, “Resolving the Democracy Paradox”; Jaquette and Wolchik, Women and Democracy; Tremblay, “Democracy, Representation, and Women”.
32 Plotke, “Representation is Democracy”; Pitkin, “Representation and Democracy”; Dovi, “Preferable Descriptive Representatives”.
33 Levitsky and Way, “Elections Without Democracy”; Diamond, “Thinking about Hybrid Regimes”; Morse, “The Era of Electoral Authoritarianism”; Carothers, “The End of the Transition Paradigm”.
34 Diamond, Developing Democracy; Carothers, “The End of the Transition Paradigm”; Ottaway, Democracy Challenged.
35 Diamond, “Is the Third Wave Over?”; Friesen, “Strategic Ballot Removal”.
36 O’Donell, “Delegative Democracy”; Levitsky and Way, “Elections Without Democracy”; Diamond, “Thinking about Hybrid Regimes”; Morse, “The Era of Electoral Authoritarianism”; Carothers, “The End of the Transition Paradigm”. Levitsky and Way, “Elections without Democracy”; Diamond, “Thinking about Hybrid Regimes”; Morse, “The Era of Electoral Authoritarianism”; Carothers, “The End of the Transition Paradigm”.
37 Bogaards, “How to Classify Hybrid Regimes?”.
38 See note 7 above.
39 Hafner-Burton, “Trading Human Rights”; Bush, “International Politics and the Spread of Quotas”.
40 Edgell, “Foreign Aid, Democracy, and Gender Quota Laws”.
41 Bush, “International Politics and the Spread of Quotas”.
42 Bauer and Burnet, “Gender Quotas, Democracy, and Women’s Representation in Africa”; Sommer and Forman-Rabinovici, Producing Reproductive Rights.
43 Mulligan, Ricard, and Sala-i-Martin, “Do Democracies Have Different Public Policies”; Nelson, “Elections, Democracy, and Social Services”; Lott, “Public Schooling, Indoctrination, and Totalitarianism”.
44 Doyle, “Government Co-option of Civil Society”.
45 Johnson and Saarinen, “Twenty-First-Century Feminisms under Repression”; Lorch and Bunk, “Using Civil Society”.
46 Hildebrandt, “What Shapes Abortion Law”; Forman-Rabinovici and Sommer, “Reproductive Health Policy-Makers”. Sommer and Asal, “Political and Legal Antecedents of Affirmative Action”; Sommer and Asal, “A Comparative Analysis of Women’s Political Rights”.
47 Lewis, “Gender and the Development”; Sainsbury, Gender and Welfare State Regimes; Lewis, Gender, Social Care and Welfare.
48 Inter-Parliamentary Union, “Women in National Parliaments”.
49 Forman-Rabinovici and Sommer, “Reproductive Health Policy-Makers”; Forman-Rabinovici and Sommer, “An Impediment to Gender Equality?”.
50 World Bank Group, “Government Expenditure on Education”.
51 World Bank Group, “Current Health Expenditure”.
52 Gygli, Haelg, and Sturm, The KOF Globalisation Index; Dreher, “Does Globalization Affect Growth?”.
53 King and Mason, Engendering Development; Dollar and Gatti, Gender Inequality, Income, and Growth; Eastin and Prakash, “Economic Development and Gender Equality”; Bhandari, “Gender Inequality in Mobile Technology”.
54 Inglehart and Welzel, “How Development Leads to Democracy”; Colaresi, and Thompson, “The Economic Development-Democratization Relationship”; Acemoglu et al., “Democracy Does Cause Growth”.
55 Other controls were considered including the Human Development Index, a gender parity index, religious variables, gender quotas and female labor force participation. These variables were ultimately left out as they were either highly collinear with each other, other control variables and the independent variable, or had no effect when tested with pooled models.
56 Marshall, Gur, and Jaggers, Polity IV Project.
57 As a test of robustness, we also generated models that were pooled for each variable. Rather than separate models based on regime type, regime type was controlled for by the presence of the Polity index or the Freedom House score. These models yielded the same results in terms of significance of independent variables and lack of significance for regime type.
58 Sommer, “Women, Demography, and Politics”.
59 Mazur, Theorizing Feminist Policy; Mazur, “Toward the Systematic Study”; Young, “Deferring Group Representation”; Celis, “Substantive Representation of Women”; Krizsán, Skjeie, and Squires, Institutionalizing Intersectionality.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Aliza Forman-Rabinovici
Aliza Forman Rabinovici is a PhD candidate in the Tel Aviv University School of Political Science. Her research focuses on the intersection between gender and public policy, and the role and impact of female leadership in politics. Aliza has had articles published in top peer-reviewed journals and serves as the academic advisor to the Israeli Ministry of Science’s Council for the Advancement of Women as well as a policy researcher and advisor for major political parties and figures in Israel.
Udi Sommer
Udi Sommer is chairperson of the Israeli Young National Academy of Science. He is tenured senior faculty member at the Political Science Department and head of the Center for the Study of the USA at Tel Aviv University with the Fulbright Program. He studies the politics of gender and sexuality within a comparative framework, as well as the development of institutions on the interface of law and politics. He has published extensively on those topics at Cambridge University Press, Comparative Political Studies, Public Administration and Law & Society Review among others. He has taught political science as well at Columbia University of New York and at SUNY.