St Comp Int Dev (2009) 44:212227

DOI 10.1007/s12116-009-9043-2

Democracy and Gender Equality

Caroline Beer

Published online: 28 April 2009

# Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2009

Abstract This article examines the relationship between democracy and gender
equality. In particular, it contrasts the impact of long-term stocks of democracy with
the contemporary level of democracy and the participation of women in democracy.
It contends that democracy should be thought of as a historical phenomenon with
consequences that develop over many years and decades and that womens
participation should be included as an important component of democracy. The
main argument is that long-term democracy together with womens suffrage should
provide new opportunities for women to promote their interests through mobilization
and elections. A cross-national time-series statistical analysis finds that countries
with greater stocks of democracy and longer experience of womens suffrage have a
higher proportion of the population that is female, a greater ratio of female life
expectancy to male life expectancy, lower fertility rates, and higher rates of female
labor force participation.
Keywords Democracy . Gender equality . Policy

Introduction
What is the relationship between regime type and gender equality? Given the
theoretical connection between democracy and equality, it may seem that democracy
and gender equality should go hand in hand. Yet, historically democratic theory has
excluded women. Even today, many prominent democracy scholars find no
contradiction in categorizing political systems as democratic even when the
female half of the population was prohibited from participating in government. Thus,
it is an open empirical question whether democracy promotes the well-being of
women. While a large body of scholarship examines the relationship between
C. Beer (*)
Political Science, University of Vermont, Old Mill Room 533, 94 University Place, Burlington,
VT 05405-0114, USA
e-mail: Caroline.Beer@uvm.edu

St Comp Int Dev (2009) 44:212227

213

democracy and economic growth (Gerring et al. 2005), world peace (Russett 1993),
human rights (Mitchell and McCormick 1988), human development (Przeworski
2000), and almost every other policy imaginable, surprisingly little empirical
research has addressed the relationship between democracy and gender equality.
Presumably women (just as men) will tend to benefit from general improvements in
social welfare that result from economic growth and political stability, but it is not
clear how this progress will influence the distribution of these benefits between men
and women. In fact, there is some evidence that greater inequality between men and
women creates opportunities for greater economic growth (Seguino 2000), that
women are more mobilized in dictatorships than in democracies (Jaquette 1994), and
that it may be easier to enact some types of progressive gender legislation in
authoritarian settings than in democracies (Htun 2003a; Smith and Padula 1996).
The main argument of this paper is that over time democracy is likely to create
conditions that favor greater gender equality. The inconclusive relationship between
democracy and gender equality found in previous research is likely related to
inconsistent and possibly inappropriate conceptualization and measurement of both
democracy and gender equality. Gender equality is a complex and multidimensional
concept and it seems likely that different causal variables drive different dimensions.
This study helps to clarify the causes of gender equality by disaggregating the
dimensions and focusing on womens capabilities and opportunities, as measured by
a set of basic development indicators. In terms of measuring democracy, this article
uses a number of measures to capture the contemporary level of democracy, the
historical experience with democracy, and womens participation in democratic
institutions. It draws on the theoretical contributions of Gerring et al. (2005) and
conceptualizes democracy as a long-term historical process. The consequences of
democracy may take years or decades to unfold. Thus, in addition to measuring the
level of democracy at a particular moment in time, this study also measures
democracy as a stock that builds over time. The longer a country has had a
democratic government, the greater its stock of democracy will be. Because most
standard measures of democracy do not include womens participation as a
component of democracy, the study also includes two measures of womens
participation in democracy. The following analysis uses a cross-national time-series
dataset to test the consequences of the stock of democracy on gender equality.

Previous Research
Existing research provides conflicting evidence about the relationship between
democracy and gender equality. Various studies have found that the level of
democracy, measured by Freedom House, is not significant in determining the
percentage of women in parliaments and cabinets (Reynolds 1999; Kenworthy and
Malami 1999; Paxton 1997). Reynolds (1999) does find, however, that the number
of competitive multiparty elections since 1945 and the number of years since women
were allowed to stand for election were significantly related to the percentage of
women in parliaments and cabinets, thus providing evidence for the importance of
long-term democracy and womens participation. Kenworthy and Malami also find
that the year women gained suffrage is significant. Paxton (1997) hypothesizes that

214

St Comp Int Dev (2009) 44:212227

democracies will have more women in the parliament because democracies reduce
artificial and arbitrary barriers to power and are therefore more likely to promote the
interests of those not in power. Paxton, however, finds democracy to be either
insignificant or, in some instances, negatively related to womens representation. The
negative coefficient suggests that there are fewer women legislatures in democracies
than in authoritarian regimes.
McDonagh (2002) finds that democracy is most beneficial to women when it is
combined with the constitutionalized provision of social welfare and a monarchy
that is open to women. Richards and Gelleny (2007) measure the status of women
with the United Nations Gender-related Development Index (GDI) and Gender
Empowerment Index (GEM) as well as three indicators from the Cingranelli
Richards Human Rights dataset. They find that democracy is positively related to
most of their indicators of womens status. Browns (2004) analysis of democracy
and gender inequality in education shows a strong relationship with executive
recruitment, but not other aspects of democracy such as institutional constraints or
political participation.
Reversing the direction of causality, Fish (2002) suggests that gender equality
causes democracy. He posits that countries where women are excluded from public
life are more likely to be authoritarian. In response to Fish, Donno and Russett
(Donno and Russett 2004) use a more fully specified regression model and find that
democracy is significantly related to women in government, but not to other
measures of womens status. Donno and Russett suggest that it may take many years
before the impact of democracy is noticeable, again suggesting the importance of
long-term democracy.
Inglehart, Norris, and Welzel (2002) find that the Freedom House measure of
democracy is highly correlated with the percentage of women in the lower house of
parliament, but in their multivariate regression model the democracy variable is not
significant. Two cultural variables are highly significant and explain a large portion
of the variance. Inglehart et al.s main argument is that modernization leads to
cultural changes that produce both democracy and gender equality. Thus, in their
view, the correlation between democracy and gender equality is spurious.
Unfortunately, their model includes no variation over time, making it impossible
to determine the direction of causality. Moreover, the variables they use to measure
culture are problematic. The main cultural variable is a dummy variable for countries
that are historically Protestant, but this variable is highly correlated with historic
experience with democracyalmost all of the countries that have long-standing
democracies have a strong Protestant heritage. The second cultural variable is a
countrys aggregate response to a survey question about whether men make better
political leaders than women. This variable seems to be measuring something very
similar to the dependent variable. In fact, the question seems to be a very good
measure of gender equality, and may be more appropriately used as a dependent
variable, as Seguino (2007b) does. Since both the survey data and the actual data on
womens representation seem to be measuring gender equality, the argument risks
tautologygender equality causes gender equality. Thus, it is no surprise that this
variable explains a large portion of the variance.
The relationship between gender equality and regime type is complicated by the
diversity of authoritarian regimes. While many traditional dictatorships and military

St Comp Int Dev (2009) 44:212227

215

regimes are based on conservative, religious, and/or nationalistic ideologies that

discourage womens equality, some communist regimes and populist dictatorships
claim to improve gender equality. Dictators may promote a traditional role for
women that reduces gender equality, or they may bestow rights upon women from
above that increase womens equality. Reynolds (1999) finds that left-wing
authoritarian regimes have more women in their parliaments and cabinets than other
regimes. McDonagh (2002, p. 535) focuses on monarchies that are open to women
and points out that the transition to democracy in the United States decreased the
political citizenship of women because some women lost the right to be queens, and
no women gained the right to vote.
The regime of General Francisco Franco in Spain provides a classic example of
how a dictatorship based on a conservative, religious, and nationalistic ideology may
institute policies unfavorable to womens equality. Francos policies were meant to
promote women as a housewife with many children (Infante 2000, 82). When
Franco took power in 1939, he overturned many progressive reforms from the
Second Republic and instituted laws to keep women at home and subservient to their
husbands. In 1942, Franco made it illegal for married women to work outside the
home (Infante 2000, 78). Under Franco, a married woman had no legal rights over
her own or family finances, and could not even travel without her husbands
permission. Women also had no legal authority over their own children (Infante
2000, 88). With modernization and democratization, these laws were reformed and
Spanish women were able to take a more active role in public life and a more equal
role in private life.
Fidel Castros communist regime in Cuba, in contrast, embraced (at least
officially) gender equality as an essential component of the socialist revolution. As
a result the state encouraged womens employment, built child care centers,
outlawed domestic service and prostitution, provided universal access to divorce,
contraception, and abortion, and even adopted a Family Code requiring men and
women to share equally household and child-rearing duties (Smith and Padula
1996). Still, women were not well represented in political institutions, least of all in
the political institutions that actually held power (Luciak 2005). And on some
important womens issues such as rape and domestic violence, the regime remained
silent (Smith and Padula 1996). Smith and Padula conclude that the lack of
democracy in Cuba allowed the state to implement a set of policies designed to
improve gender equality without concern for public opinion. Nevertheless, they
caution that because of the authoritarian nature of the regime, women remain
effectively minors, beneficiaries of the goodwill and interest of the patriarch
(p. 183).
While the experience of Spain and other countries with traditional, conservative,
or nationalistic dictatorships suggests that democracy improves gender equality, the
experience of many socialist countries suggests the opposite. Research on women in
post-socialist Eastern Europe has found that many of the rights that women gained
during socialism have been lost since democratization (Rueschemeyer 1998; Waylen
1994; Jaquette and Wolchik 1998). Reproductive rights have been curtailed, state
support for child care has diminished, the numerical representation of women in
government dropped, and many women exited the labor market and returned to the
private sphere after the fall of socialism. Waylen (1994) suggests that the decline in

216

St Comp Int Dev (2009) 44:212227

womens legal status in Eastern Europe was due to the rise of conservative,
nationalist, and religious ideologies together with the discrediting of feminism due to
its association with communism.
Thus, it is not entirely clear from previous research whether democracy is more
likely than autocracy to promote gender equality. Democratization has improved
gender equity in some cases, but reversed equity-enhancing reforms in other cases.
Systematic statistical evidence has demonstrated that democracy promotes gender
equality in some cases, but not others. Still, there are important theoretical reasons to
expect that democracy would improve gender equality.

Conceptualizing and Measuring Democracy and Gender Equality

Both democracy and gender equality are complex, multidimensional concepts that
present serious challenges for conceptualization and measurement. Defining
democracy is one of the most controversial methodological issues facing political
scientists. Nevertheless, the vast majority of scholars have adopted a procedural
definition based on the insights of Schumpeter (1962). Mainstream political science
research tends to rely on one of a handful of available measures of democracy.
Amazingly, relatively few of these standard measures of democracy include
womens suffrage as a component, (see Paxton 2000). According to Paxton
(2000), only Bollens (1998) index of democracy explicitly incorporates womens
suffrage.1 Incorporating womens suffrage into measures of democracy is problematic if the measure is dichotomous. In this case, the transition to democracy for most
advanced industrial democracies would be the year women gained the right to vote.
If this were the case, then Switzerland, which did not grant women the right to vote
until 1971, would be coded as a non-democracy in 1970, the same as Francos Spain.
Clearly there are important differences between Switzerlands government and
Spains fascist regime that a measure of democracy should reflect. While obviously a
country is not fully democratic if women do not have the right to vote, there are also
important differences between countries governed by representative institutions that
exclude women and dictatorships with no representative institutions at all. A scale of
the level of democracy could more easily incorporate womens participation, but
most widely used democracy scales do not.
John Gerring et al. (2005) introduce the concept of the stock of democracy and
analyze its impact on economic growth. They argue that the consequences of
democratic rule will likely play out over a very long period of time, and therefore
democracy should be understood from a historical perspective in which a countrys
history of regime type is considered in addition to the contemporary level of
democracy. Gerring et al. write (p. 325) We propose to consider regimes as
historically informed phenomena rather than as contemporary variables. This means
looking both backward and forward in time (via lagged predictors). In particular, it
means measuring a countrys accumulated stock of democracy rather than its level of
democracy at a particular moment in time. The core insight is that institutional
1

According to its most recent report, however, Freedom House does incorporate gender equality as a very
minor subset of civil liberties (Freedom in the World 2007).

St Comp Int Dev (2009) 44:212227

217

effects unfold over time, sometimes a great deal of time, and that these temporal
effects are cumulative. Gerring et al. find that the stock of democracy has a robust,
significant, positive influence on economic growth. This article will extend those
findings to examine the consequences of democratic stock on gender equality. Since
Gerrings stock variable is constructed from the Polity score, which does not
consider womens suffrage, the importance of womens participation is tested by
including a variable for the year women won the right to vote and also an interactive
variable of stock of democracy and womens participation.
Gender equality is also a complex and highly disputed concept. It is clearly
multidimensional, and there is some scholarly consensus that gender equality should
be assessed in terms of three domains: capabilities, opportunities, and empowerment/
agency (United Nations Research Institute for Social Development 2005, 50; Grown
et al. 2003; Seguino 2007a). Capabilities have been widely measured by indicators
of health, education, and nutrition. Most common are educational attainment and
enrollment rates, life expectancy, and sex ratios. Maternal mortality has also been
used to as an indicator of capabilities. Opportunities are measured by the equality of
access to resources such as land, credit, and property, together with labor force
participation and employment rates.
Empowerment relates to the degree of representation in deliberative bodies and is
often measured by the percentage of women in the legislature. While the percentage
of women in the legislature is a useful measurement for many purposes, it is not
useful for analyzing differences between authoritarian and democratic countries.
Many authoritarian countries do not have legislatures, thus the measure will
artificially reduce the sample. The legislatures that do exist in authoritarian regimes
are largely meaningless window dressings. Representation in a powerless institution
is not a good indicator of empowerment. Violence against women reflects low
empowerment of women, but is notoriously difficult to measure (United Nations
Research Institute for Social Development 2005). Given the problems with
measuring womens empowerment within an authoritarian regime, this analysis
focuses solely on capabilities and opportunities.
Two standard measures that address gender issues are the UNDPs Gender-related
Development Index (GDI) and Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM). Neither of
these measures is appropriate for this study. As Klasen (2006) clarifies, the GDI is
not a measure of gender equality, but rather a measure of human development that
incorporates an aversion to inequality penalty to show the impact of gender gaps on
overall human development. Thus, the measure is largely driven by a countrys
general level of prosperity. There are serious methodological problems with the data
as well. Most importantly, the GDI was calculated differently before 1999, so the
data before 1999 is not comparable to the data after 1999. Thus, the data cannot be
used in time series (Klasen 2006). The GEM measures womens agency rather than
well-being, but it also incorporates an income component. As a result, a poor
country can never achieve a high value, even if it has high levels of equality (Klasen
2006).
A number of new measures have been proposed recently, including the GID-DB
by Jutting et al. (2008) and the Gender Gap Index by the World Economic Forum
(Hausmann et al. 2007). While these new measures may prove useful, neither is
available in time series. Moreover, given the disparities of previous research and the

218

St Comp Int Dev (2009) 44:212227

complexity of gender equality, more clarity can be achieved using a disaggregated

measure of the widely accepted dimensions of opportunities and capabilities, rather
than aggregated indexes.

Causal Mechanisms
The two main causal mechanisms linking democracy and gender equality are
mobilization and electoral accountability. Theoretically, under democracy less
advantaged sectors of society are more able to organize and mobilize to defend
their interests. The protection of civil rights afforded by a democracy allows
subordinated sectors such as women to form groups and lobby for their interests.
Similarly, democratic elections provide an opportunity for citizens to promote their
interests and hold rulers accountable.
In some cases, however, the common wisdom about womens mobilization has
been just the opposite of what democratic theory would predict. Many studies of
Latin America suggest that women were more mobilized during the military
dictatorships of the 1970s and 1980s than they were in the democracies that followed
(Jaquette 1994; Alvarez 1990). The same phenomenon has been observed in other
regions as well (Zoepf 2006). The widely accepted explanation is that women
mobilized during the dictatorships because male-dominated forms of interest
representation such as political parties and labor unions were heavily repressed.
Political organization instead took place in homes and neighborhoods where women
were more likely to have a strong presence. Since the ideology of many dictatorships
also emphasized protecting traditional families, it was politically more difficult for these
governments to target extensive violence against women, particularly women who were
organizing as mothers (Bouvard 1994). Additionally, leaders may have assumed that
women were weak and powerless and therefore not a threat to the regime (Alvarez
1990). Thus, while traditional male-dominated institutions such as political parties
were severely repressed and unable to provide a voice to the opposition, womens
groups were allowed more space to mobilize and articulate their interests during the
dictatorships (Waylen 1994). As a result, womens groups became key players in the
movements for democracy across the region (Jaquette 1994). Once democracy was
established and political parties retook control of politics, however, many womens
groups that had been key actors in the democratization process demobilized.
While these earlier accounts were pessimistic about the role of womens
movements in the new democracies, more recent scholarship suggests that even
though many womens organizations demobilized, women remained active in
politics (Htun 2003b). As political parties regained a central role in politics, many
women left gender-specific organizations to take on leadership roles in the newly
reemerging political parties. As a result, women have made impressive gains in
political influence, gaining unprecedented numbers of elected representatives and
leadership positions in many new democracies. Thus, while women may have been
more mobilized into gender-specific organizations under authoritarianism, womens
political participation may be even more influential under democracy.
The second central causal mechanism linking democracy and gender equality is
electoral accountability. Womens ability to pursue their interests within a democracy

St Comp Int Dev (2009) 44:212227

219

probably depends upon their having the right to vote and participate in government.
While, as noted above, political scientists have traditionally considered countries
democratic even when women do not have the right to vote, without womens
suffrage democracy would probably hold less promise for womens equality since
women would have to depend on men to fight for womens interests in the political
system.
Unlike some disadvantaged groups, women are not a minority. If women have the
right to vote, they should theoretically be able to defend their interests through
elections. Yet, while many studies have shown that there is a gender gap in voting
behavior, the nature of the gap has changed over time and differs according to local
context (Iversen and Rosenbluth 2006). Moreover, voting is a rather blunt instrument
for accountability, especially since the salience of many gender issues may be low. If
incumbents produce good economic outcomes, will they be voted out on the basis of
unpopular gender policies? Moreover, other cleavages such as race and class may
overshadow gender concerns in voting decisions. While most studies suggest that
gender-related issue voting is not decisive, some evidence suggests that the
extension of suffrage to women has increased government spending on social
welfare (Abrams and Settle 1999; Lott and Kenny 1999), suggesting that womens
electoral participation can produce substantive results over time.
The ability of elections to deliver greater gender equality depends upon public
opinion towards gender equalizing reforms. If the majority of the population does not
desire greater gender equality, then greater accountability in democracies may not
improve womens position. Htuns (2003a) comparative study of gender policies in
South American countries shows that in some cases the military regimes implemented
reforms that improved womens legal status because the laws were developed by small
groups of policy elites and not subject to wide debate and public opinion. Equality
enhancing reforms have been extremely controversial in many new democracies, but
there have been important advances in legislation related to domestic and sexual
violence, and an increase in legislative quotas for women, largely due to international
agreements made at United Nations sponsored World Conferences on Women.
As with other development areas, the consequences of democracy for gender
equality will likely take many years to develop. Gender equality is a long-term
policy investment. Millennia of inequality cannot be overturned in a few years. After
a regime change, it may take years to establish new ways of doing politics. In many
cases, new democratic institutions and bureaucracies have to be constructed from
scratch. People have to be trained to take on the new jobs of running a democracy. It
may take a generation or more before the new democratic institutions become widely
respected and infused with value. Furthermore, political actors must learn how to
most effectively make use of new powers such as the right to vote. Developing
strategies for successful mobilization and interest representation in a new political
context also takes time.
Not only is long-term democracy important for development outcomes but longterm participation of historically marginalized groups is also key. The longer women
have the right to vote and participate in government, the more time they have to
learn how to most effectively promote their well-being. Previous research
demonstrates that the effect of womens suffrage grows over time. Voter turnout of
women slowly increased over time after the extension of voting rights to women

220

St Comp Int Dev (2009) 44:212227

(Duverger 1954; Lott and Kenny 1999, 1188). In the United States, rates of womens
voter turnout only began to equal that of mens turnout in the 1980s, 60 years after
women were enfranchised (Conway 2002). Thus, we should expect to find that the
consequences of democracy for gender equality play out over time and may not be
immediately apparent after a democratic transition.
While the purpose of this article is to examine the impact of long-term democracy
on gender equality, clearly other factors are also important in bringing about greater
gender equality. Economic and social modernization may improve gender equality.
As the standard of living of a society increases and its population becomes more
educated and urban, it is likely that the lives of both men and women will improve.
The health and education gap between men and women may also narrow in
wealthier countries where more people live in urban areas. Countries where
agriculture dominates the economy tend to have more traditional social structures
and therefore may have less gender equality. Government expenditures may also be
important in reducing gender equalities. Gender equality is enhanced by government
subsidies of childcare and parental leave (Gornick and Meyers 2008), and women
tend to have more job opportunities in countries with large public sector employment
(Esping-Andersen 1999). Thus, I would expect that a higher GDP per capita, greater
urbanization, higher levels of literacy, a lower percentage of agriculture in the
economy, and more government expenditures would be related to greater gender
equality. There also may be cultural or regional effects on gender equality. The
Middle East, for example, has very low indicators for the status of women. Hence, I
also include dummy variables for major world regions.

Analysis
The data set contains data from 179 countries between 1960 and 2004. The timeseries cross-sectional models are estimated using a GEE model with a 1-year lag for
all explanatory variables, except democratic stock, which is lagged by 2 years so that
it does not include the value of the level of democracy in its calculation.
The dependent variable is gender equality. Following the lead of earlier research
(e.g., Seguino 2007a), this study will focus on basic development indicators to
measure womens capabilities and opportunities. Capabilities are measured by: the
percentage of the population that is female, the ratio of female life expectancy at
birth to that of males, the fertility rate, and average female educational attainment
minus average male educational attainment. The percentage of the population that is
female measures discrimination against women in the broadest way: are women as
likely to be born and survive as men? With widespread sex-selective abortion and
inequality in the care of boys and girls in some countries, the percentage of the
population that is female is alarmingly low. The prevalence of sex-selective abortion
is a clear sign of the relative value society places on girls versus boys. Another broad
indicator of womens opportunities is the ratio of female life expectancy to that of
males.2 A low life expectancy ratio suggests systematic discrimination against
2
The life expectancy ratio is calculated using interpolated data. Data are interpolated using Statas ipolate
function.

St Comp Int Dev (2009) 44:212227

221

women. In particular, it may indicate unequal access to medical care, and it may
indicate higher levels of violence against women. The schooling gap (the difference
between the average years of educational attainment of women and men) is an
indicator of educational equity. Lower fertility rates not only improve womens lives
by reducing the time and energy women must devote to bearing and caring for
children, but lower fertility rates also may indicate more equality within the
household. Traditional economic theories view the household as the basic unit of
analysis, and therefore assume that households make rational decisions that benefit
all of their members. Feminist interpretations look at the distribution of costs and
benefits within the household. If men make reproductive decisions for the household,
but women pay most of the costs of bearing and rearing the children, then we would
expect the fertility rate to be high. If women have greater influence over household
decisions and men pay a greater share of the costs of rearing children, then we would
expect the fertility rate to be lower (Folbre 1983). A lower fertility rate is also an
indicator of other opportunities for women aside from motherhood. Moreover,
following the logic of Przeworski et al. (2000) that fertility decisions are shaped by
concerns over being cared for in old age, presumably when daughters are likely to
earn their own income and have equal control over their familys finances, parents
would need only half as many children to guarantee their welfare in old age; whereas
in traditional patriarchal societies, parents can rely only on their sons. Fertility is
measured as the total births per woman.
Womens opportunities are measured by the percentage of the total labor force
that is female. Scholarship on the status of women has long pointed to the
importance of paid labor for women so they can improve their bargaining position
within the household and within the economy more generally (Folbre 2008; Folbre
1994; Mahony 1995; Lundberg and Pollak 1993). As more women join the
workforce, they earn more money. As they gain more control over economic
resources, they also establish a better bargaining position vis a vis their husbands and
may therefore gain more control over their lives (Iversen and Rosenbluth 2006).
Data for the percentage of the population that is female, the life expectancy ratio,
fertility, and female labor force participation come from the World Development
Indicators 2006. The education data are from Barro and Lee (2000).3
The main explanatory variables are the level of democracy and the stock of
democracy. The level of democracy is measured by the current Polity 2 variable
from the Polity IV data set. Gerrings stock variable is based on the Polity 2 score
from the Polity IV dataset. The Polity IV dataset measures democracy in terms of
three components: executive recruitment, independence of executive authority, and
political competition and opposition. The Polity IV dataset does not incorporate
womens suffrage either directly or indirectly. (Thus, Switzerland, for example,
receives a perfect score of 10 on democracy even when women were not permitted
to vote.) For a full explanation of the Polity IV data, see the Polity IV website http://
www.systemicpeace.org/polity/polity4.htm. The stock measurement of democracy is
created by adding up each countrys Polity 2 score from 1900 with a 1% annual
depreciation rate. It is lagged an extra year behind the level of democracy to reduce

The schooling data are interpolated using Statas ipolate function.

222

St Comp Int Dev (2009) 44:212227

collinearity with the level of democracy variable. I use Gerring et al.s (2005)
measure of democratic stock. The 1% depreciation is used because the level of
democracy in recent years is presumably more important to current conditions than
the level of democracy 50 or 100 years ago. The Polity 2 score is used because it is
one of the few measures of democracy that is available for a long time series.
The two democracy variables are supplemented with two gendered democracy
variables. The model includes a variable for the year women won the right to vote
and an interactive variable (womens stock of democracy) that is calculated in the
following way: (Gerrings stock of democracy +1,000)(The year of the observation
the year women gained suffrage). Gerrings stock of democracy varies from
negative 612 to positive 648. The years with suffrage also takes on a negative value
in the years before women gained suffrage. Therefore, 1,000 is added to Gerrings
stock of democracy so that we do not get high positive values for the interaction
term when both stock of democracy and years with suffrage are negative.
While the exclusion of womens participation from the Polity 2 score is certainly
problematic from a conceptual and theoretical perspective, for the purposes of this
study it is actually methodologically useful. If gender equality were considered as a
component of the democracy measure, then there would be a serious risk of
tautology. Moreover, because the democracy measure does not consider womens
suffrage, the statistical analysis can directly control for suffrage and thereby
determine the relative importance of institutional democracy versus the participation
of women in democratic institutions.
Controls are included for the urbanization (the percentage of the population living
in urban areas), the standard of living (the natural log of GDP per capita), and the
importance of agriculture to the economy (agricultural production as a percentage of
GDP), illiteracy (the natural log of the percentage of the population that is illiterate),
and government expenditures as a percentage of total GDP. These data are all from
the World Development Indicators 2006. Dummy variables for Africa, Asia, Latin
America, and the Middle East are included to control for cultural and regional
effects. Europe is the base category. A trend variable is also included. The trend
variable is simply a count variable that controls for change over time.
In Table 1, the gender equality indicators are regressed against all four measures
of democracy together with the control variables. There is some inconsistency across
the various measures of democracy and gender equality, but overall there is a strong
relationship between both institutional democracy and womens participation in
democracy with greater gender equality. Gerrings democratic stock, the level of
democracy, and the interactive womens stock of democracy are expected to be
positively related to all of the gender equality indicators except fertilityhigher
fertility is an indicator of lower gender equality. The year women can vote is
expected to be negatively related to all of the gender equality indicators except
fertility (the earlier women could vote, the more gender equality we would expect).
The coefficients for Gerrings democratic stock variable and the year women
gained the right to vote are significant in the hypothesized direction for three of the
five estimations. And the coefficient for the democratic stock variable just misses
standard levels of statistical significance with 93% confidence for the percentage of
the population that is female. For the education variable, both the democratic stock
and the year women won the right to vote have coefficients with signs in the

0.002 (2.03)*

2,608

133

Observations

Number of country code, banks

*Significant at 5%; **significant at 1%

Absolute value of z statistics in parentheses

110.900 (6.90)**

Constant
133

2,608

4.309 (12.54)**

0.001 (7.08)**

0.015 (1.88)

1.510 (3.12)**

0.009 (2.05)*

Middle East (dummy)

0.001 (0.12)

0.158 (0.43)

Latin America (dummy)

Trend

0.003 (0.44)
0.034 (5.35)**

0.595 (1.64)

1.984 (5.02)**

Africa (dummy)

Asia (dummy)

0.0002 (4.13)**

0.191 (5.45)**

0.002 (2.38)*

Illiteracy rate (ln)

Expenditure, total (% of GDP)

0.0003 (3.87)**

0.018 (8.62)**

Agriculture, value added

(% of GDP)

133

96

133

2,608

9.041 (0.11)
2,166

34.049 (2.90)**
2,608

40.289 (13.63)**

11.763 (5.80)**
0.187 (5.49)**

0.452 (1.49)
0.008 (2.03)*

6.257 (4.07)**

1.299 (0.79)

4.985 (3.14)**

0.214 (3.09)**

0.868 (3.74)**

0.140 (0.54)

0.653 (2.57)*

0.041 (5.17)**

1.326 (5.24)**

0.036 (2.25)*

0.842 (2.50)*

0.064 (3.84)**

0.00006 (2.19)*

0.026 (0.62)

0.005 (0.28)

0.005 (2.52)*

Female % of total
labor force

0.034 (24.91)**

0.369 (7.05)**

0.069 (1.23)

0.403 (7.34)**

0.367 (7.70)**
0.0003 (0.41)

0.056 (5.74)**

0.000 (0.25)

0.0004 (1.28)

0.001 (1.24)

0.011 (5.26)**
0.017 (0.47)

0.003 (4.53)**

0.000 (1.12)

0.017 (2.81)**

0.090 (6.76)**

0.000 (1.50)
0.004 (2.76)**

0.063 (27.60)**

0.006 (0.13)

Urban population (% of total)

0.00002 (18.12)**

0.000001 (9.37)**

GDP per capita (ln)

0.022 (14.12)**

0.002 (9.31)**

0.029 (3.50)**

0.000 (0.54)

Year women gain suffrage

Interactive womens stock

0.005 (3.11)**

0.000 (1.42)

0.001 (14.50)**
0.000 (0.41)

0.00004 (4.80)**
0.000 (0.12)

0.001 (1.81)

0.016 (6.82)**

Female schooling
male schooling

Fertility rate (ln)

Democracy stock

Female life expectancy

male life expectancy

Democracy level

Female % of total
population

Table 1 GEE regression results of democracy on gender equality

St Comp Int Dev (2009) 44:212227

223

224

St Comp Int Dev (2009) 44:212227

opposite direction of what is hypothesized. Countries with a greater stock of

democracy and a longer tradition of womens suffrage have lower rates of female
educational attainment as compared to male educational attainment. These results are
puzzling. The overall level of illiteracy is strongly related to the education variable,
and the correlation between illiteracy and other variables in the model seem to be
affecting the coefficients. When the illiteracy variable is removed from the model,
the other coefficients take on the hypothesized sign. The year women can vote is not
significant in the regression of womens labor force participation. This may suggest
that womens long-term participation in the political system is more important for
improving long-term capabilities for women than it is for shaping current
opportunities.
The other two measures of democracy, the current level of democracy and the
interactive womens stock of democracy, are somewhat less strongly related to
the gender equality measures. The level of democracy measure is significant and in
the hypothesized direction for the percentage of the population that is female. Again,
mirroring the strange results for the education data for the stock variable and
womens suffrage, the level of democracy is statistically significant and negatively
related to womens educational attainment. The interactive womens stock variable
tests whether there is an extra effect of the interaction after democracy and womens
suffrage has already been controlled. The results show that the interaction is
significantly related to a lower life expectancy ratio, higher fertility, and higher
participation of women in the labor force. Thus, the interactive variable is related to
greater gender equality in terms of labor force participation, but lower gender
equality in terms of life expectancy and labor force participation.
Among the control variables, the modernization variables are strong predictors of
gender equality, in some cases stronger than the democracy variables. Countries
where a greater percentage of the population live in urban areas have fewer women,
lower fertility rate, lower female labor force participation, and a greater female
educational attainment versus male. The fertility and education coefficients are in the
hypothesized directions, indicating that more urban countries have greater gender
equality, but the coefficients are not in the hypothesized direction for the female
population and female labor force participation. Since we hypothesized that a lower
female population is related to high rates of sex-selective abortion, it may be that
urban societies have more access to ultrasounds and abortion, which may be driving
the negative coefficient. The coefficient for labor force participation is not in the
hypothesized direction, suggesting that women are more likely to be in the labor
force in more rural societies. This finding is also supported by the positive sign on
the coefficient for agriculture. The coefficients for GDP per capita are in the hypothesized direction in all of the equations except womens labor force participation,
though the coefficients for female population and education are not significant.
Thus, wealthier countries tend to have a higher life expectancy for women as
compared to men, a lower fertility rate, and a lower percentage of women in the
workforce. Countries with an agricultural-based economy have lower levels of
womens capabilities, but a higher rate of female labor force participation. Illiteracy
is the strongest and most consistent of the modernization variables in predicting
gender equality. Illiteracy is significantly related to all of the gender equality measures with the coefficients in the hypothesized direction. The greater the proportion

St Comp Int Dev (2009) 44:212227

225

of the population that is illiterate, the fewer women there are, the lower female life
expectancy is compared to male life expectancy, the higher the fertility rate, the
lower the educational attainment of women as compared to men, and the lower the
female labor force participation. Government expenditures is significantly positively
related to female population, female life expectancy, and labor force participation,
thus supporting previous research that countries with a large public sector tend to
have greater levels of gender equality. The dummy variables for the regions also are
important in controlling for various regional effects. There is a strong positive trend
through time in all of the equations except the schooling variable, suggesting that
(with the exception of educational attainment) gender equality improved from 1960
to 2004. Again, the schooling results are puzzling.
In sum, both the democracy variables and the control variables for economic
development and modernization are significantly related to gender equality. The
illiteracy rate is the most consistent predictor of gender equality. The coefficients for
the stock of democracy and womens suffrage are significant in the hypothesized
direction for three of the five indicators. The coefficients for the GDP per capita and
the importance of agriculture are significant in the hypothesized direction for two of
the five indicators. The strength and consistency of the relationship between
government expenditures as a percentage of GDP and gender equality points to the
role of government and party ideology in generating gender equality. Leftist parties
tend to support both a greater role for government in the economy and also greater
gender equality. Government ideology complicates the role of regime type because
both democratic leftist governments such as Sweden and authoritarian leftist
governments such as Cuba have strongly supported policies for gender equality.
The statistical findings presented here, however, demonstrate that, all else equal,
long-term democracies tend to promote greater gender equality than authoritarian
regimes.

Conclusion
Previous studies of the developmental consequences of democracy have been
inconclusive. Similarly, most research on the consequences of democracy for gender
equality has shown no decisive impact for democracy. If democracy were simply
measured as a contemporaneous level variable, the results in this paper would be
consistent with those ambivalent prior findings. Recent democracy scores may be
associated with improved gender equality, but not decisively or consistently so.
Considering democracy as a stock and controlling for womens participation in
democratic institutions, however, this study finds somewhat stronger results. These
earlier studies have missed the essential component of time in shaping the way
democracy influences policy outcomes. The beneficial consequences of democracy
and greater political inclusion take time to develop. It is unrealistic to expect
democracy to fix long-standing structural problems such as income, racial, ethnic,
and gender inequality in just a few years after a new regime is established. Thus, the
tradition of using measures of contemporary democracy to test the significance of
democracy for development is clearly inadequate. Furthermore, the significance of
the womens suffrage variable demonstrates that relying on measures of democracy

226

St Comp Int Dev (2009) 44:212227

that do not consider womens suffrage a component of democracy is also inadequate.

Using a better specified measure of democracy that accounts for both its long-term
impact and womens participation, this research shows that democracy makes a
significant contribution to increasing gender equality. While the contemporary level
of democracy is important in two of the models, the stronger influence of the stock
of democracy and womens suffrage draws attention to the reality that womens
participation is important and that democracy is a long-term process with
consequences that may take many years to unfold.
While modernization and economic development are clearly important in
generating greater gender equality, long-term democracy and womens participation
in democracy are also strongly related to greater gender equality. Even after
controlling for the effects of modernization and development, long-term democracy
and womens participation have a significant influence on improving the status of
women relative to men. Thus, even in poor countries with low levels of public
spending, literacy, democracy, and womens participation can make a difference in
the lives of women.

References
Abrams BA, Settle RF. Women's suffrage and the growth of the welfare state. Public Choice. 1999;100(34):289300.
Alvarez SE. Engendering democracy in Brazil: womens movements in politics. Princeton: Princeton
University Press; 1990.
Barro RJ, Lee J-W. International data on educational attainment: updates and implications. CID Working
Paper No. 042. Harvard University: Cambridge, MA; 2000.
Bollen KA. Cross-national indicators of liberal democracy, 1950-1990. Codebook. University of North
Carolina: Chapel Hill, NC; 1998.
Bouvard MG. Revolutionizing motherhood: the mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. Wilmington: Scholarly
Resources; 1994.
Brown DS. Democracy and gender inequality in education: a cross-national examination. Br J Polit Sci.
2004;34(1):13752.
Conway MM. Women and political participation. PS, Polit Sci Polit. 2002;34(2):2313.
Donno D, Russett B. Islam authoritarianism, and female empowerment: what are the linkages? World
Polit. 2004;56(4):582607.
Duverger M. Political parties, their organization and activity in the modern state. London, Methuen; 1954.
Esping-Andersen G. Social foundations of postindustrial economies. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 1999.
Fish MS. Islam and authoritarianism. World Polit. 2002;55(1):4.
Folbre N. Of patriarchy born: the political economy of fertility decisions. Fem Stud. 1983;9(2): 2684.
Folbre N. Who pays for the kids? Gender and the structures of constraint. London: Routledge; 1994.
Folbre N. Reforming care. Politics Soc. 2008;36(3):37387.
Gerring J, Bond P, Barndt WT, Moreno C. Democracy and economic growth: a historical perspective.
World Polit. 2005;57(3):32364.
Gornick JC, Meyers MK. Creating gender-egalitarian societies: an agenda for reform. Polit Soc. 2008;36
(3):31349.
Grown C, Gupta GR, Khan Z. Promises to keep: achieving gender equality and the empowerment of
women. Washington D.C.: International Center for Research on Women; 2003.
Hausmann, Ricardo, Laura D. Tyson, and Saadia Zahidi. 2007. The Global Gender Gap Report 2007.
Geneva, Switzerland: World Economic Forum.
Htun M. Sex and the state: abortion, divorce, and the family under Latin American dictatorships and
democracies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 2003a.
Htun MN. Women and democracy. In: Dominguez JI, Shifter M, editors. Constructing democratic
governance in Latin America. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press; 2003b.

St Comp Int Dev (2009) 44:212227

227

Infante M. The changing status of women in Spain from 19601990. Mod Eur Research. 2000;6:7793.
Inglehart R, Norris P, Welzel C. Gender equality and democracy. Comp Sociol. 2002;1(3/4):321.
Iversen T, Rosenbluth F. The political economy of gender: explaining cross-national variation in the
gender division of labor and the gender voting gap. Am J Polit Sci. 2006;50(1):119.
Jaquette JS. The women's movement in Latin America: participation and democracy. 2nd ed. Boulder:
Westview; 1994.
Jaquette JS, Wolchik SL. Women and democracy: Latin America and Central and Eastern Europe.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins; 1998.
Jutting JP, Morrisson C, Dayton-Johnson J, Drechsler D. Measuring gender (in)equality: the OECD
gender, institutions and development data base. J Hum Dev. 2008;9(1):6586.
Kenworthy L, Malami M. Gender inequality in political representation: a worldwide comparative analysis.
Soc Forces. 1999;78(1):23569.
Klasen S. UNDP's gender-related measures: some conceptual problems and possible solutions. J Hum
Dev. 2006;7(2):24374.
Lott JR Jr, Kenny LW. Did women's suffrage change the size and scope of government? J Polit Econ.
1999;107(6):116398.
Luciak IA. Party and state in Cuba: gender equality in political decision making. Polit Gend. 2005;1
(02):24163.
Lundberg S, Pollak RA. Separate spheres bargaining and the marriage market. J Polit Econ. 1993;101
(6):988.
Mahony R. Kidding ourselves: breadwinning, babies, and bargaining power. New York: Basic Books;
1995.
McDonagh E. Political citizenship and democratization: the gender paradox. Am Polit Sci Rev. 2002;96
(3):535.
Mitchell NJ, McCormick JM. Economic and political explanations of human rights violations. World
Polit. 1988;40(4):47698.
Paxton P. Women in national legislatures: a cross-national analysis. Soc Sci Res. 1997;26(4):44264.
Paxton P. Women's suffrage in the measurement of democracy: problems of operationalization. Stud Comp
Int Dev. 2000;35(3):92.
Przeworski A. Democracy and development: political institutions and well-being in the world, 19501990.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 2000.
Reynolds A. Women in legislatures and executives of the world. World Polit. 1999;51(4):547.
Richards DL, Gelleny R. Women's status and economic globalization. Int Stud Quart. 2007;51(4):85576.
Rueschemeyer M. Women in the politics of postcommunist Eastern Europe. Rev. and expanded. Armonk:
M.E. Sharpe; 1998.
Russett BM. Grasping the democratic peace : principles for a post-Cold War world. Princeton: Princeton
University Press; 1993.
Schumpeter JA. Capitalism, socialism, and democracy. 3rd ed. Harper: New York; 1962.
Seguino S. Gender inequality and economic growth: a cross-country analysis. World Dev. 2000;28
(7):1211.
Seguino S. Plus Ca Change? Evidence on global trends in gender norms and stereotypes. Fem Econ.
2007a;13(2):128.
Seguino S. The great equalizer? Globalization effects on gender equality in Latin America and the
Caribbean. In: Shaikh A, editor. Globalization and the myths of free trade. London: Routledge; 2007b.
Smith LM, Padula A. Sex and revolution : women in socialist Cuba. New York: Oxford University Press;
1996.
United Nations Research Institute for Social Development. Gender equalitystriving for justice in an
unequal world. Geneva, Switzerland: United Nations Research Institute for Social Development;
2005.
Waylen G. Women and democratization. World Polit. 1994;46(3):327.
Zoepf K. Women lead an Islamic revival in Syria, testing its secularism. New York Times, August 29,
2006, 1, 2006.
Caroline Beer is Associate Professor of political science at the University of Vermont. She is author of
Electoral Competition and Institutional Change in Mexico, published by the University of Notre Dame
Press, 2003. Her research has also been published in journals such as the American Political Science
Review, Comparative Politics, International Studies Quarterly, Comparative Political Studies, and Latin
American Politics and Society.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.