Designing Social Inquiry week 15

Gender Balance in Politics: Female Political Repres-entationComparative Study of three Democratic

Countries

I36005 Soohyung Ahn

Hillary Clinton • Front-runner for the 2016 Democratic

Primary in the United States

• Americans seized with the notion that they

finally arrive at mature virtue of democracy by achieving the equality between men and women in politics

• The Puzzle• Literature Review• The Test

Contents

The Puzzle• According to the United Nations, the

United States falls behind other coun-tries in terms of its proportion of women politicians

• Rwanda (63.8% in the Lower House and 38.5% in the Upper House)

• Bolivia (53.1% in the Lower House and 47.2% in the Upper House)

• Andorra (50%), Cuba (48.9%)• Cf. US (19.4%) in the 114th Congress

The Puzzle (cont'd )• Compared to even other full-

democracies such as Germany and Spain, the United States falls quite behind them

• In 2015, female participation in par-liament worldwide:

- Germany: 21th / Spain: 12th/ the US: 73th

• German: 36.5 % for lower house and 40.6 % for upper house in 2015

• Spain: 41.1 % for lower house and 33.8 % for upper house in the same year

• America: 18.3 % for the House and 20 % for Senate in 2014

• American Congress participation rate for women is 19.4 % in 2015

(19.3 % for the House of Represent-atives and 20% for the Senate)

• the US scores high on economic op-portunity and education for women

• America has not only had no female president in its history, but women still make up far less than half of Congress

• In contrast, Germany and Spain, similar to the US in socio-economy, popula-tion, sex ratio, and democracy level, rank higher level for political empower-ment of women than the US

• All the three countries rank high in 2015 GDP—Germany, 4th; Spain, 14th; the US, 1st

• Population: the US ranked 3rd in 2014, followed by Germany (17th) and Spain (28th)

• The three countries showed the same sex ratio of o. 97 male to 1 female.

• Democracy level: Germany ranked 13th, followed by the US (19th) and Spain (22nd)

WHY, Federal level? (puzzle cont'd )

• Female participation rates for politics are low at both local and federal levels

• However, US congress has shown much lower women participation than statewide elective offices and state legislatures since 1979

The Puzzle (cont'd )• Why the US has relatively fewer

female politicians at the fed-eral level than Germany and Spain even though they are all similar in socio-economy, population, sex ratio, and democracy level?

Literature Review• The most dominant factors include

political socialization, prejudice of political elites, lack of party support, traditional sexual roles, and the role of the mass media

• However, these independent vari-ables, perfectly correlated, can be indeterminate

• They are equally consistent with male-centered culture

• A few researches combine the male-centred cul-ture and female political ambition to explain the phenomenon

• Jennifer and Richard combined the concepts of the male-centered culture and psychological in-volvement to conclude that American women have low political ambition from the begin-ning

• Insufficient social welfare in the US also re-stricts women’ roles to housework and causes them to reduce their ambition and interest in polit-ics.

• Therefore, women give up on running for office from the beginning.

Literature Review (cont'd )

Literature Review (cont'd )

• However, female representation at local levels is not as low as that at federal levels

• In 2015, women have held 19.4 % in the 114th Congress, 24.8 % at statewide elect-ive executive offices and 24.2 % at state legislatures.

• Female participation rate just decrease as it involves the higher level—federal level

• The theory women give up on running for office from the beginning because of less ambition is not persuasive enough

• Germany and Spain, having high female repres-entation in politics, are similar to the US in cul-tural factors

• In particular, although both Spain and the US have male-dominant political culture, Spain shows much higher female political participation rates than the US

• Male-centered culture cannot give reasonable explanation to the female under-representation in US politics. Therefore, socio-cultural factors are not valid enough to explain the low fe-male political participation rates in the US.

Literature Review (cont'd )

• Gender quotas and electoral systems• Countries where quotas for female candid-

ates are presently mandated at the federal and local levels have achieved noticeable success in increasing female representation in politics

• There have also been arguments regarding whether the quotas are a protection policy for women and minority groups or unfair sys-tems

• Therefore, the discussion about quotas will be excluded and the main focus will be put on electoral systems

Literature Review (cont'd )

• The types of electoral systems in a country play an important role in wo-men’s political representation

• The US adopts winner-take-all or single-member system

• Germany and Spain adopt the mul-timember-district system

• It is necessary for the US to reform the fundamental ground which is related electoral systems in order to achieve gender balance in politics

Literature Review (cont'd )

The Test (cont'd )• The aim of this paper is to examine the vari-

able “electoral systems” with its focus on female political representation through com-parative study among the three democratic countries: Germany, Spain, and the United States

• My dependent variable is the low political representation of women in the US

• Proportional representation (PR) system is believed to contribute to more balanced propor-tions in politics

• When the focus is no longer on a single candid-ate, parties are freed to nominate candidates.

• Therefore, I can establish the hypothesis that PR systems can enhance the representation of women

The Test (cont'd )

• In particular, Germany and Spain, which adopt the mixed system or proportional representation sys-tem respectively, show difference in female political participation rates. Female representation in Spain is greater than that in Germany.  

• In addition, Vermont in the US, one of the two states that adopt PR sys-tem, shows much higher female parti-cipation rates than the other states.

• A majority of researches regarding female political representation combine electoral systems and culture theory as intervening variables.  

• However, there are not many researches that study female political representation using electoral system as a single vari-able Therefore, I will test the electoral system as a single variable to prove its effect on female political representa-tion

The Test (cont'd )

Conclusion•One of the barometers of legitimacy of democracy is whether a country creates a society where all citizens, regardless of gender, are encouraged to run for public office and represent them-selves

•Therefore, electing men and women equally is a national as well as a global imperat-ive.