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First published September 1987

Electoral Systems, Contextual Factors and Women's Opportunity for Election to Parliament in Twenty-Three Democracies

Wilma RuleView all authors and affiliations
Volume 40, Issue 3
https://doi.org/10.1177/106591298704000307
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1 For example, of the twenty U.S. states with some or all multimember assembly and state senate districts in 1984, the Pearsonian correlation with the percentages of women in both houses was .29 significent at the .02 level (Rule 1986). All multimember district states have non-party list systems.
2 While the election of blacks to at-large multimember city councils in the U.S has been minimal in the past (Engstrom and McDonald 1986: 203-25), recent research (Weaver 1986) suggests that this relationship may be changing.
3 The inference cannot be drawn, however, from what may be an atypical sample of consti tuencies to the universe of elections in a country.
4 An unexpected development since that period occurred in the Canadian elections of 1984. Women's percentages increased to 9.6 percent in the House of Commons as a result of upset victories by the Tory party, the Progressive Conservatives (Bagnell 1984). Con versely, French party list/ PR elections of 1986 show no appreciable rise in women's representation in parliament (Embassy of France, July 1986), apparently because of failure of the major parties to place women on the PR lists in favorable positions.

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Volume 40, Issue 3
Pages: 477 - 498
Article first published: September 1987
Issue published: September 1987

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Wilma Rule
Markleeville, California
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