Women in politics : a cross-national demand and supply analysis

It is striking that the sharp increase in the number of countries moving towards self-governance and democracy has not been accompanied by more equal political representation of women. What is equally puzzling is the contrast in the share of women in positions of political authority observed between countries, with many developed nations having fewer women legislators than a number of lesser-developed countries. Why are there so few women in most parliaments and why is there such variation across countries? To understand gender-based inequality in political authority, we look at the various stages of candidacy and identify potential bottlenecks to women participation and election into public office. There are three stages which one must pass through successfully to become a legislator. The first is becoming eligible and a part of the pool from which politicians are drawn, then being selected as a candidate and finally being elected to office. Potential barriers to entry for women in the legislative process may exist at any or all of these three stages. Each of these candidacy stages is discussed through a cross-national analysis and a case study of India. The cross-national data is for 175 countries at three points in time: 1975, 1985 and 1995. The Indian case study looks at women in parliament from the first general elections in 1951-1952 and focuses most on the 1996 parliamentary data. We argue that the key factor limiting the recruitment of women into politics is women's sparse representation in the pool from which politicians are recruited. Just as in thecase of men, women are drawn from an elite pool based on their occupational achievements.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Political Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2002

Author dc:creator

• Prasad, Bela

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Stephen Daniel Ansolabehere.

• Political Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/8174

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/8174