Wartime Sexual Violence and Gender Quota Adoption

Previous work has identified an increase in women’s legislative representation following civil war, while international intervention has been associated with the adoption of gender quotas. In this paper, we subject the implications of civil conflict for women’s legislative representation to a more nuanced investigation by disaggregating the category of conflict. Specifically, we turn to the prevalence of sexual violence in conflict as a factor that increases pressure from below and above on governments to adopt gender quotas. First, we argue that women’s sustained mobilization in response to wartime sexual violence creates pressures on governments to address gender issues and enhance women’s political representation. Second, international gender norms are particularly salient in conflicts that are visibly gendered, i.e. where sexual violence is prevalent. In support of the theoretical framework, our empirical analysis reveals that states with widespread wartime sexual violence adopt gender quotas sooner than states experiencing other civil conflicts and than states experiencing no conflict in the same period. Supplemental growth models provide suggestive evidence that these gender quotas have increased women’s legislative representation.