https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6902-7576
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ABSTRACT
Does the women’s descriptive representation have nonlinear impacts on women’s substantive representation? This article contributes to the literature on women in politics by opening the academic black box of the nonlinear impacts of women’s descriptive representation with the time-series cross-national data on the ratification of women’s international treaties of 117 countries from 1960 to 2016. Our study demonstrates that there is a nonlinear relationship between the improvement of women’s descriptive representation in parliaments and the number of women’s international treaties ratified. To be specific, we find that the increase in the percentage of women in parliaments leads countries to ratify women’s international treaties. Interestingly, the link between the percentage of female legislators and the number of women’s international treaties ratified turns into a negative relationship when the percentage reaches around 30%. We also find that the impact of women’s descriptive representation is only valid in democratic countries.
Data Availability
Data used in this article can be found at https://github.com/byngdeuk/Nonlinearity-WDR/blob/main/repplication%20data.dta
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 The number of countries and the period are based on the data availability of dependent, independent, and control variables. Rather than arbitrarily imputing missing values in each database employed in this article, we rely on listwise deletion. Both multiple imputation and listwise deletion are biased when data are missing not at random (MNAR). However, Pepinsky (Citation2018), using simulation, demonstrated that multiple imputation compared to listwise deletion are more likely to yield empirical results which are biased and less efficient, when data are MNAR.
2 The open multilateral treaties are the universal treaties that are open to all countries in the world, or to all countries in a particular region.
3 V-Dem uses latent variable analysis through Bayesian item response theory measurement model to build comparable cross-national measures of the international autonomy. See Pemstein et al. (Citation2018) for detailed information about V-Dem’s measurement model.
4 The high individual VIFs related to polynomial terms are not problematic. Please refer Hair, Black, Babin, Anderson, and Tatham (Citation1998) for more information about the VIF test and the interpretation of the individual and mean VIFs.
5 We utilize the fixed-effects model especially because the number of treaties a country can ratify is not equally distributed among countries and years. Countries can ratify international treaties only when they have not ratified them in the past and when new treaties are open for sign and ratification. For instance, some countries (especially democracies) may no longer have treaties to ratify because they have already joined all the human rights treaties available. The fixed-effects model was selected for our research as a model that can parcel out this country and year-specific factor as much as possible.
6 We refer the formula for the panel fixed effects models from Torres-Reyna (Citation2007). The STATA command “xtreg” with “fe” option is utilized when we estimate the panel fixed effects models.
7 Fifteen Western European and North American countries (Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland), Thirteen Sub-Saharan African countries (Angola, Burundi, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zimbabwe), seven Latin American countries (Argentina, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, Mexico, and Nicaragua) two Caribbean countries (Guyana, and Trinidad and Tobago), two North African and the Middle Eastern countries (Algeria and Tunisia), one South-East Asian country (East Timor), and one Eastern European country (Slovenia). The classification of geo-political regions is from Teorell et al. (Citation2010).
8 Gender Quotas is binary variable. 1 indicates that the country has a legislative gender quotas. Female Head of State measured by the v2exfemhos variable from the V-Dem dataset, is also a binary variable indicating whether there is a female head of state or not. We rely on the International Labor Organization database to build Women’s Labor Participation which is a continuous variable measuring the labor force participation rate of female aged over fifteen. Lastly, Women’s Suffrage is a continuous variable measuring the percentage of enfranchised female adults above the minimal voting age in each country. The variable named v2fsuffrage from the V-Dem dataset is employed to build Women’s Suffrage. Again, missing values are not imputed arbitrary.
9 To estimate a two-way fixed effects model with first-order autoregressive error term, we rely on the “xtregar” command with “fe” option in STATA.
10 We split the samples into non-democratic countries and democratic countries based on the Polity Score. We classify countries with Polity Score less than 6 as non-democratic countries; otherwise, countries with Polity Score more than or equal to 6 are classified as democratic countries.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Byung-Deuk Woo
Woo, Byung-Deuk is a Post-Doctoral Researcher in the Pohang University of Science and Technology. He received a bachelor's degree in political science and international relations from Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (2017) and a PhD degree in political science in 2021 from the University of Iowa. His research focuses on Comparative Politics and Women in Politics. He has published journal articles in the British Journal of Political Science, Sage Open, Korea Observer, Asian Women, and so on.
Ki Eun Ryu
Ryu, Ki Eun is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in Jeju Peace Institute. She received a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in international relations from Seoul National University and she received a PhD degree in political science in 2020 from the University of Iowa. Her dissertation ‘Dynamics of International Treaty Diffusion’ explores how diffusion models explain the spread of international multilateral treaties across countries. Her main research area is international law and treaty, especially on the diffusion of policies and treaties. She is also interested in the link between domestic politics and international behaviour such as the relationship of regime type and treaty ratification/compliance.