The Effect of Increased Women's Representation in Parliament: The Case of Rwanda

Devlin, Claire; Elgie, Robert

doi:10.1093/pa/gsn007

“…Women participate more intensively in associations, farm cooperatives and credit groups (Colletta and Cullen 2000) and Rwandan women have the highest proportion of parliamentary representation in the world (Devlin and Elgie 2008;Kayumba 2010). Yet the increased presence of women in the public and policy domain is restricted to Kigali, the Rwandan capital, and mostly benefits well-educated middle-class women; the patterns have not really changed in rural areas.…”

Section: Gender Roles In Rwandamentioning

confidence: 99%

Who Does What in a Household after Genocide? Evidence from Rwanda

Schindler

¹

2010

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in AbstractThis paper investigates the determinants of intra-household time allocation in post-war Rwanda. A decade after the 1994 genocide, Rwanda still bears the demographic impact of the war, in which at least 800,000 people died and the majority of casualties were adult males. The paper explores two unique features: exogenous variation in household types and large variation in regional cohort-specific sex ratios. Results indicate that, first, exposure to violence and male death can be a trigger of change in gender roles. Second, there is little flexibility to negotiate responsibilities within the household. Third, the local marriage market impacts the division of labor. Young, unmarried women engage more intensely in typical female activities when the shortage of men is severe. Conforming to the female gender role may be a strategy to improve their chances to marry.

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“…A large body of work has explored their effectiveness in increasing women's presence in legislatures worldwide (Jones 2009;Krook 2009;Matland 2006;Paxton, Hughes, and Painter 2010;Schwindt-Bayer 2009;Tripp and Kang 2008). Other research documents their influence on the representation of women's interests (Devlin and Elgie 2008;Franceschet and Piscopo 2008;Chattopadhyay and Duflo 2004;Beaman et al 2009). Still others examine the symbolic effects of quotas, including their impact on women's career ambitions (Beaman et al 2012) and political participation and engagement (Barnes andBurchard 2013, Kittilson andSchwindt-Bayer 2012), as well as beliefs about women's ability to govern (Alexander 2012).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender Quotas and Women's Political Leadership

O’Brien

¹

,

Rickne

²

2014

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may AbstractThough more than 100 countries have adopted gender quotas, the impacts of these reforms on women's political leadership remain largely unknown. We exploit a quasi-experiment-a zipper quota imposed by the Swedish Social Democratic national party on municipal party groups-to examine quotas' effect on women's selection and survival as leaders within their parties. We find that those municipalities where the quota had a larger impact became more likely to appoint female leaders, but not more likely to support the reelection of women to the post. Extending this analysis, we show that the quota increased the number of qualified female candidates without increasing the diversity among women within the group. These results lend support to the notion that quotas may have an acceleration effect on women's representation in leadership posts and help dispel the myth that quotas trade short-term gains in women's descriptive representation for long-term exclusion from political power.Keywords: gender quotas; political leadership; party leaders; political careers; electoral reforms; women and politics; subnational politics JEL Codes: G34, G38, J48, J20 The widespread adoption of gender quotas is one of the most important political developments of the modern era. As these reforms have spread around the world, there is increasing interest in their broader impacts (Franceschet, Krook, and Piscopo 2012). Despite our growing understanding of quotas' broader impacts, their effect on women's appointment to higher political office remains unknown. In particular, no study has yet considered whether quotas help or hinder women's selection to, and survival in, leadership posts within political organizations. This is a surprising oversight, both because of the potential significance of women's position in the political hierarchy for their descriptive, substantive, and symbolic representation and the conflicting expectations generated by the literature. On the one hand, quotas may increase the supply of women eligible for leadership posts and give them more opportunities to join forces to support other women for top office. This means that quotas could have a positive "acceleration effect" on women's access to top political posts. On the other hand, both scholars and activists have linked increases in "quota women" to stigmatization and backlash effects, which means that quotas could produce a trade-off effect in which immediate gains...

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“…The quota system instituted by the RPF led to a dramatic rise in women's political representation. But studies by Devlin and Elgie (2008) and Burnet (2011) have confirmed that, although the increased visibility of women as political actors has contributed to improvements in the social climate in parliament, a greater prominence of gender issues on the political agenda, and popular perceptions of women as legitimate political actors, the substantive impact of women parliamentarians on policy change has been far more limited given the executive branch's remaining hold over the legislative process. In spite of their critical role in the reconstruction of Rwanda, the domestic responsibilities of women-particularly in rural areas-have not diminished, exacerbating their already heavy workload (Burnet 2011: 305).…”

Section: Rwanda's "Landmark" Gender Violence Legislationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Women Run the Show”?: Gender Violence Reform and the “Stretching” of Human Rights in Rwanda

Hebert¹

2015

Journal of Human Rights

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Even many scholars considered to be strong human rights universalists understand that the interpretation and implementation of human rights will vary across time and place. What remains unclear is how much room for interpretation exists before the rights in question are no longer recognizable as human rights. This article engages this question through an analysis of Rwanda's 2009 gender violence legislation, a law framed by the government as human rights-oriented and widely praised as "landmark" legislation. I argue that an analysis of its provisions reveals the dangers of approaching the implementation of gender violence legislation as a progressive step in itself and that granting flexibility to authoritarian, post-conflict societies in the interpretation of human rights norms risks stretching human rights in a way that undercuts the principle that makes them distinctive-that all persons are entitled to equal concern and respect, independent of the fulfillment of social obligations.

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The Effect of Increased Women's Representation in Parliament: The Case of Rwanda

Cited by 187 publications

References 10 publications

Who Does What in a Household after Genocide? Evidence from Rwanda

Who Does What in a Household after Genocide? Evidence from Rwanda

Gender Quotas and Women's Political Leadership

“Women Run the Show”?: Gender Violence Reform and the “Stretching” of Human Rights in Rwanda

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