Political Science, Department of
ORCID IDs
Kang http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5443-8356
Kim http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0621-4192
Document Type
Article
Date of this Version
2020
Citation
Democratization (2020) 27(2): 340–358
doi: 10.1080/13510347.2019.1700953
Abstract
Why do some countries have fewer women in parliament than do others? Recent studies find that women have less access to positions of political power in countries facing external threats. Exist-ing studies, however, do not differentiate between types of threat. We theorize that territorial threats are a particular driver of gender inequality in national parliaments. When a country’s land is under threat, people prefer having “tough” representatives in the national legislature who are competent on the military and defense moreso than when a country faces other threats. Moreo-ver, when countries face territorial threats, they build larger standing armies and adopt military conscription, raising the level of militarization in society, which negatively influences women’s access to the national legislature. Using a time-series cross-sectional dataset of 101 democracies, we find that countries facing external territorial threats have lower percentages of women in par-liament compared to countries facing other or no external threats. Additionally, we find that countries with higher levels of militarization have fewer women in the national legislature.
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Comments
Copyright 2020, Routledge/Taylor and Francis. Used by permission