Political equality for women and the poor: Assessing the effects and limits of world society, 1975–2010

Abstract

Empirical tests of world society theory routinely analyze the effects of country-level linkages to international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) on countries’ policies and practices. Analysts regard INGOs as “conveyor belts” that transport cultural models and scripts to countries around the globe. We modify this mechanistic interpretation by shifting focus to the broader institutional and cultural environments in which INGOs operate. Using data for an unbalanced panel of 126 countries between 1975 and 2010, we examine the effect of INGO linkages on the distribution of political power by gender and socioeconomic status. We find that INGOs are much stronger predictors of political equality for women than for the poor, and we argue that these differential effects reflect broader world-cultural conditions. Women’s rights are highly institutionalized in world society, which enhances the effectiveness of INGOs. Socioeconomic rights discourses, conversely, are comparatively less institutionalized and more contested, especially following the neoliberal turn.

Global diffusion of laws: The case of minimum age of marriage legislation, 1965–2015

“…The sweeping INGO argument may work for more public issues like education, trade while it does not hold true for rather private issues such as marriage, divorce, corporal punishment (ref) and alike. Cole and Perrier's (2019) study also find that INGOs are more effective in domains that are highly institutionalised. In this study, I do not unpack why women parliamentarians are more effective in passing for legislation of minimum age of marriage.…”

The personal is global political: The antifeminist backlash in the United Nations

“…Indeed, in the past several decades, the women’s movement has been notoriously successful globally. Since the Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing in 1995, the movement has built a strong transnational alliance, it has institutionalised a gender equality framework in the UN, and it has pushed successfully for domestic legislation on women’s rights (Berkovitch and Bradley, 1999; Cole, 2013; Cole and Perrier, 2019; Inglehart and Norris, 2003; Paxton et al, 2006; Wotipka and Ramirez, 2008).…”