Miki Caul Kittilson

Women and Globalization: A Study of 180 Countries, 1975–2000

How do rising levels of international interconnectedness affect social, economic, and political conditions for women? Research on gender and international relations frequently offers clear propositions but seldom submits them to broad, quantitative testing. This article begins to fill that gap. We advance the hypothesis that, on balance and over time, increasing cross-national exchange and communication lead to improvements in womens status and equality. Economic aspects of globalization can bring new opportunities and resources to women. But equally important, globalization promotes the diffusion of ideas and norms of equality for women. In an analysis of 180 countries from 1975 to 2000, employing cross-sectional–time-series regression techniques, we examine the impact of several measures of globalization on womens levels of life expectancy, literacy, and participation in the economy and parliamentary office. International trade, foreign direct investment, membership in the United Nations (UN) and World Bank, and ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), are associated with improved conditions for women.A grant from the Center for Global Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of California, Irvine, supported this research. The authors are grateful for constructive comments from participants in the faculty research colloquium of the Department of Political Science at Brigham Young University. The authors also received helpful suggestions from their fellow panelists at the 2004 Annual Meetings of the American Political Science Association and from the editor of IO, Lisa Martin, and two anonymous reviewers.

Representing Women: The Adoption of Family Leave in Comparative Perspective

A critical justification for heightening the number of women in elective office is that women will promote policies that improve womens equality and autonomy. When and how does womens descriptive representation matter for policy outcomes? The focus on policy outcomes offers an essential test of whether having more women in office makes a difference for citizens’ daily lives. Systematic analyses of 19 democracies from 1970 to 2000 reveals that womens parliamentary presence significantly influences the adoption and scope of maternity and childcare leave policies. Womens political presence trumps the ideology of the party in power.

Engaging citizens: The role of power-sharing institutions

Drawing on established theories of comparative political institutions, we argue that democratic institutions carry important messages that influence mass attitudes and behaviors. Power-sharing political institutions signal to citizens that inclusiveness is an important principle of a country’s democracy and can encourage citizens to participate in politics. Applying multilevel modeling to data from the World Values Survey, we test whether democratic institutions influence political engagement in 34 countries. Further, we examine whether underrepresented groups, specifically women, are differentially affected by the use of power-sharing institutions such that they are more engaged in politics than women in countries with power-concentrating institutions. We find that disproportional electoral rules dampen engagement overall and that gender gaps in political engagement tend to be smaller in more proportional electoral systems, even after controlling for a host of other factors. Power-sharing institutions ca...

In Support of Gender Quotas: Setting New Standards, Bringing Visible Gains

Are gender quotas a good idea? Yes, for two reasons: Quotas are an effective mechanism for improving womens numerical representation, and they encourage new attitudes towards women in politics. I argue that the numerical and ideational gains brought by gender quotas outweigh the potential pitfalls they might introduce. From a pragmatic standpoint, quotas constitute an imperfect means to a positive end: womens political empowerment. What is more, formal rules may become norms, reinforcing changing attitudes. I would like to thank Marilyn Dantico, Kim Fridkin, Adrian Pantoja, Becki Scola, and the editors of Politics & Gender for their constructive comments on this essay.

Women, parties and platforms in post-industrial democracies

Will women transform party politics? As a group of relative newcomers to parties, women may contribute to shaping parties’ policy agendas and to changing party rules. A party-level perspective allows for examination of the national- and party-level contextual influences that condition the effect of women on party platforms. Systematic analysis of a broad range of 142 political parties in 24 post-industrial democracies from 1990 to 2003 illuminates the dynamic relationship between women’s political power and party politics. Drawing on the Comparative Manifestos Project data and original party-level data, the multi-level analyses reveal that women’s rising numbers among a party’s parliamentary delegation and among its leadership committee contribute to an emphasis on social justice in the party programme, and to the adoption of gender quota policies. Furthermore, for welfare state expansion, the effect of women MPs is amplified by the presence of a women’s organization within the party.

Virtual Civil Society in the United States and Australia

Although many scholars agree that social interactions within traditional social groups build social capital, there is less consensus on the benefits of virtual interactions on the Internet. The authors compare the activity of Americans and Australians based on a common battery of social network interaction questions. Their findings suggest that virtual social interactions foster many of the same positive social capital traits for citizenship norms and political participation that are produced by traditional in-person social networks. Thus, social networking and virtual interaction have the potential to generate new stocks of social capital in contemporary democracies.

Sharing Power: Women, Parliament and Democracy

Sharing Power: Women, Parliament and Democracy . Edited by Yvonne Galligan and Manon Tremblay. Aldershot: Ashgate. 2005. 271 pp.

Feminizing Political parties: Women's party member organizations within European parliamentary parties

50.00. This insightful volume contributes to our understanding of womens numerical and substantive representation in national legislatures around the world. Specifically, it focuses on a full array of dimensions of womens political presence: obstacles to womens entrance into parliament, policy mechanisms to improve womens underrepresentation, and the policy impact of growing numbers of women in national politics. Chapter authors draw evidence from a variety of sources—aggregate data on percentages of women in parliament, cabinets and political parties, surveys of political elites and public opinion, and in-depth interviews with party officials.

The impact of descriptive representation on “persistent” gender gaps: political engagement and political trust in Uruguay

Party member women’s organizations were early features of party development. While some contemporary studies maintain these are important sites for the substantive representation of women, there is also a claim that they are in decline. Our primary purpose here is to establish the existence of party member women’s organizations – as one test of the first dimension of party feminization: the inclusion of women. We draw on new survey data of 17 European countries provided by Scarrow, Poguntke and Webb. We establish that almost half have a party member women’s organization. The new data also permits analysis of relationships between party member women’s organization and gender quotas for the top party leadership body (National Executive Committee (NEC)), women’s presence among the party leadership and candidate quota rules. Together we see these (i) as a means to establish whether women are marginalized within the party, thereby limiting descriptive representation and (ii) as surrogate measures for women’s substantive representation. We importantly find that the presence of a party member women’s organization does not come at the cost of women’s presence on the NEC. In the final section, we turn our attention to building a new comparative research agenda that more fully addresses substantive representation.

Advancing Women in Political Science: Navigating Gendered Structures of Opportunity

ABSTRACT Persistent gender gaps in political engagement, which have been observed across the globe, continue to puzzle researchers. Given that the heightened legislative presence of a previously under-represented group has the potential to boost political involvement among citizens, this paper addresses the question of how women’s increased descriptive representation can shape political engagement and trust in the democratic process. The adoption of a gender quota in Uruguay allowed us to prognosticate a rise in women’s descriptive representation following the October 2014 elections. Our two-wave panel survey polled 1200 Uruguayan citizens immediately prior to the elections when the gender quota was first applied and shortly thereafter. Our results reveal that “persistent” gender gaps are not insurmountable. After the election, women are more likely to trust in political institutions than men, and previous gender gaps in political interest, understanding of the issues, and trust in elections dissipate.