Mona Lena Krook

RETHINKING WOMEN'S SUBSTANTIVE REPRESENTATION

This article seeks to rethink how scholars have traditionally studied womens substantive representation. It outlines a framework that aims to replace questions like ‘Do women represent women?’ with ones like ‘Who claims to act for women?’ and ‘Where, how, and why does the substantive representation of women occur?’ Arguing that representation occurs both inside and outside legislative arenas, the article calls attention to the wide range of actors, sites, goal, and means that inform processes of substantive representation.

Rethinking the life cycles of international norms: The United Nations and the global promotion of gender equality

The diffusion of international norms and their effects on policy and political behaviour are central research questions in international relations. Informed by constructivism, prevailing models are marked by a crucial tension between a static view of norm content and a dynamic picture of norm adoption and implementation. Observing that norms continue to evolve after they emerge, we argue that a discursive approach offers a more promising way forward for theorizing and analysing the life cycles of international norms. We present a view of norms as processes, calling attention to both ‘internal’ and ‘external’ sources of dynamism. We illustrate this theory by tracing and comparing the life cycles of two global equality norms: gender-balanced decision-making and gender mainstreaming. We find that these norms emerged from two distinct policy realms, and after briefly converging in the mid-1990s, have since developed largely separately from, and often in tension with, one another.

Reforming Representation: The Diffusion of Candidate Gender Quotas Worldwide

In recent years, more than a hundred countries have adopted quotas for the selection of female candidates to political office. Examining individual cases of quota reform, scholars offer four basic causal stories to explain quota adoption: Women mobilize for quotas to increase womens representation, political elites recognize strategic advantages for supporting quotas, quotas are consistent with existing or emerging notions of equality and representation, and quotas are supported by international norms and spread through transnational sharing. Although most research focuses on the first three accounts, I argue that the fourth offers the greatest potential for understanding the rapid diffusion of gender quota policies, as it explicitly addresses the potential connections among quota campaigns. In a theory-building exercise, I combine empirical work on gender quotas with insights from the international norms literature to identify four distinct international and transnational influences on national quota debates: international imposition, transnational emulation, international tipping, and international blockage. These patterns reveal that domestic debates often have international and transnational dimensions, at the same time that they intersect in distinct ways with international and transnational trends. As work on gender quotas continues to grow, therefore, I call on scholars to move away from simple accounts of diffusion to a recognition of the multiple processes shaping the spread of candidate gender quotas worldwide. I would like to thank Judith Squires, Sarah Childs, Ewan Harrison, and participants in the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy Graduate Fellows Workshop at Columbia University, as well as the editors and three anonymous reviewers at Politics & Gender , for their helpful comments. Earlier versions of this article were presented as a paper at the International Studies Association Annual International Convention, Montreal, Canada, March 17–20, 2004, and at the British International Studies Association Annual Conference, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK, December 20–22, 2004.

Critical Mass Theory and Women's Political Representation

In studies of womens legislative behaviour, the concept of critical mass is widely used and, more recently, criticised as a tool for understanding the relationship between the percentage of female legislators and the passage of legislation beneficial to women as a group. In this research note, we revisit classic contributions by Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Drude Dahlerup and outline and discuss their assumptions regarding anticipated connections between numbers and outcomes. We find that later gender and politics scholars have often misconstrued their work, with crucial implications for subsequent research on relations between the descriptive and substantive representation of women. We argue that clarifying the theoretical origins of the critical mass concept is crucial for forging a more coherent and cumulative research agenda on womens political representation.

Should Feminists Give Up on Critical Mass? A Contingent Yes

Todays historic level of women in national parliaments—while still far short of parity at 16%—owes much to the global spread of gender quotas. This process, in turn, owes much to the concept of “critical mass”: International organizations, transnational networks, party politicians, womens activists, and even ordinary citizens argue that women should constitute 30% of all political bodies, the magic number where female legislators are said to be able to make a difference. As the notion of critical mass has gained wide currency in the real world, however, many scholars have come to question its utility and relevance for analyzing womens legislative behavior. Indeed, as the number of studies grows, it is increasingly obvious that there is neither a single nor a universal relationship between the percentage of women elected to political office and the passage of legislation beneficial to women as a group: In some cases, women are able to work more effectively together as their numbers grow, but in others, women appear to make a difference—in fact, sometimes a greater difference—when they form a small minority of legislators, either because their increased numbers provoke a backlash among male legislators or because their increased numbers allow individual women to pursue other policy goals. These contradictions thus raise the question: Should feminists give up on critical mass? Or are there any compelling reasons—either theoretical or practical—for retaining the concept in debates on womens political representation?

All the President's Men? The Appointment of Female Cabinet Ministers Worldwide

Women have traditionally been underrepresented among government ministers, and when included in cabinets have largely been relegated to ‘feminine’ and low-prestige policy areas. Recently, however, some countries have witnessed changes in the number, gender, and/or prestige of women’s appointments. What accounts for this variation in women’s access to ministerial power? To answer this question, we posit three competing theoretical explanations: political institutions, social indicators of gender equality, and broader trends in women’s political recruitment. To test these hypotheses, we compile an original dataset of 117 countries and construct a new measure – the Gender Power Score – which differentially weights cabinet positions based on women’s numbers and the gender and prestige of the ministries to which they are assigned. Using a finite mixture model to evaluate competing hypotheses, we find that political variables – rather than social factors – have the strongest impact on gender parity in cabinets.

Gender Quotas and Models of Political Citizenship

Gender quotas have spread rapidly around the world in recent years. However, few studies have yet theorized, systematically or comparatively, variations in their features, adoption and implementation. This article surveys quota campaigns in Western Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand. It proposes that one or more sets of controversies influence the course and outcomes of quota reforms. These revolve around (1) competing principles of equality, (2) different ideas about political representation, and (3) various beliefs about ‘gender’ and its relation to other kinds of political identities. The article draws on these distinctions to identify four broad models of political citizenship that determine the kinds of quota policies that are pursued and their prospects for bringing more women into political office.

Women's Representation in Parliament: A Qualitative Comparative Analysis

In recent years, statistical and case study research has increasingly reached conflicting findings in terms of the factors explaining cross-national variations in the percentage of women elected to national parliaments. To reconcile the conclusions of large-n and small-n research, this article employs qualitative comparative analysis (QCA), a medium-n technique, to study two populations of cases, Western and sub-Saharan African countries. In contrast to work predicated on assumptions of causal homogeneity and causal competition, the study reveals that multiple combinations of conditions lead to higher and lower levels of female representation. This finding corroborates the two guiding principles of QCA, causal combination and equifinality, suggesting that these methods may offer greater leverage than traditional techniques in discerning the various factors facilitating and hindering womens access to political office.

Gender Quotas, Norms, and Politics

Gender quotas have become an increasingly prominent solution in recent years to the underrepresentation of women in electoral politics. As research on these policies has grown, scholars have primarily sought to explain how and why quotas are adopted and, more recently, why some quota policies are more effective than others in facilitating womens access to political office. Most studies, however, also consider—often in a less systematic fashion—the normative aspects of quota reform, usually by detailing the various objections leveled against gender quotas and their impact on efforts to adopt and implement quota measures. Integrating insights from a wide range of case studies, I outline these arguments but note that quotas also generate a host of positive implications that remain largely undertheorized in this literature. I observe, further, that more and more countries are adopting gender quotas despite these well-versed normative objections. These developments indicate greater scope for political initiatives to increase womens representation—despite assumed social and economic “prerequisites” for change—and, indeed, signal a broader shift in international norms in support of projects to promote gender-balanced decision making. One of the few countries seemingly unaffected by these global trends is the United States, where proposals for gender quotas have simply not entered into the realm of public debate. After offering several possible explanations for this state of affairs, I draw on this case to emphasize the pivotal role of politics in opening and closing opportunities to pursue gender quotas, as well as to point to a new set of questions for future research.

Beyond Hillary and Benazir: Women’s Political Leadership Worldwide

Women have recently made dramatic gains in electoral politics, winning a number of high profile positions of national leadership and a record number of seats in parliaments around the world. This article surveys and analyzes these developments, seeking to understand why women’s representation has increased in some countries but not in others, as well as what these patterns indicate about changes in the status of women in political life. It concludes with some reflections on the gendered nature of the public sphere and what these shifts might mean for women as a group.