Women’s rights and legislative behavior in autocracies

Abstract

The post-Cold War era has witnessed an increased international focus on gender inequalities in politics and society. A number of international protocols, such as the 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, the Millennium Development Goals, the UNSCR 1325 on Women, Peace and Security, and the Sustainable Development Goals, have pushed countries to take active measures to increase women’s access to decision-making positions and to basic rights such as education, paid labor, and health care. Research has shown that autocracies have taken a majority of these measures (Donno et al 2021; Zetterberg et al 2021). As a result, there has been a large influx of women in legislative bodies in non-democratic countries. While gender and politics scholars have paid extensive theoretical and empirical attention to understanding these developments in democracies, our frameworks for understanding processes of increased gender equality in autocracies are less developed. When and why do (male-dominated) autocratic governments support women’ rights reforms? What are the challenges to transform societies in a gender-equal direction? And how do women navigate the legislative arena: under what circumstances are they able to have an independent voice and push for women’s rights, and when do they become loyal supporters of the autocratic regime? This panel addresses these questions, by bringing together a group of scholars ranging from PhD candidates to associate professors. They are all experts on gender and autocratic politics, but they analyze this issue from different perspectives and work on different regions and different countries. Zetterberg (co-authored with Sarah Bush and Daniela Donno) focuses on (male) autocrats and their instrumental reasons for supporting different kinds of women’s rights reforms. They hypothesize that autocratic regimes reap benefits from the international community by adopting such reforms. By surveying development practitioners in Western democracies, they find support for their hypothesis. However, Barnett as well as Yildirim (co-authored with Alper Bulut) show how patriarchal gender norms slow down processes of women’s inclusion and make implementation of women’s rights reforms difficult. These norms exist among autocratic elites, who sometimes have an incentive to send non-egalitarian cues to citizens to maintain male political dominance, as well as among male citizens. Finally, both Shalaby and Edgell zoom in on how women navigate the autocratic political landscape. However, while Shalaby shows that women legislators under certain conditions manage to carve out space and push for an agenda that benefits women, Edgell finds that women leaders are sometimes being coopted by the autocratic regime; thus, they support an agenda that reinforces autocratic power and decreases the likelihood for democratization. Taken together, the panel emphasizes the complex relationships between women’s rights, gender norms, and women’s political agency in autocracies. For your information: we have two discussants on the panel: Ragnhild Muriaas (Univ of Bergen) and Valeriya Mechkova (Univ. of Gothenburg).

Title	Details
Perceived Norms and the Politics of Women’s Rights	View Paper Details
Reconsidering the Public Consequences of Private Inequality: How Women in Unequal Marriages are More Susceptible to Anti-Gender Egalitarian Elite Cues	View Paper Details
Rewarding Women’s Rights in Dictatorships	View Paper Details
Women’s Legislative Behavior under Authoritarianism: Sponsoring and Co-Sponsoring Bills in Three Arab Autocracies	View Paper Details