Welcome to the September 2023 edition of the Gender & Politics Research newsletter. I (Bhumi) am on parental leave this semester and Annabelle is on the job market (her work here), so here are links and abstracts to some great work instead of our usual summaries.
Barnett, C. (2023). “Women’s Rights and Misperceived Gender Norms Under Authoritarianism.” Comparative Political Studies.
“Evidence from democracies shows that making laws more egalitarian can increase individuals’ perceptions that others hold egalitarian views. How do citizens in authoritarian regimes that promote women’s rights perceive public opinion on gender issues? While regime actions and narratives could increase perceptions that egalitarian attitudes are widespread, the disconnect between policy and public preferences could inhibit the expressive power of law to alter perceived norms. Drawing on original surveys and qualitative evidence from Morocco, an important case of de jure advances in women’s rights, I find that Moroccans tend to overestimate others’ embrace of patriarchal attitudes on gender issues. The tendency to misperceive conservatism spans demographic categories and is especially pronounced among men. I argue that citizens’ awareness that policy processes are divorced from electoral accountability and the raised salience of conservative opposition during reform processes can reinforce perceived conservatism, even as women’s rights advance.”
Brannon, E. (2023). “Women’s Political Representation in African Rebel Parties.” Journal of Politics, 85(3).
“Across Africa, women’s political representation is twice as high in postconflict states as it is in non-conflict-afflicted states. Scholars have attributed gains to changing gender norms, international pressure, and local women’s movements. However, these factors do not explain variance in women’s representation across political parties. This article asks how the conflict legacies of political parties influence these trends, by analyzing patterns of women’s political representation in rebel groups that transition into political parties. The article argues that these parties have unique incentives to promote women’s representation. Novel data on women’s candidacy and electoral success at the party level in postconflict Africa from 1970 to 2020 are presented. Findings suggest that rebel parties run and elect significantly more women than other political parties. These results are consistent across contexts, including varying conflict outcomes. These findings are relevant to understanding women’s postconflict political representation and the role of women in rebel parties.”
Christia, F., Larreguy, H., Parker-Magyar, E. et al. (2023). “Empowering women facing gender-based violence amid COVID-19 through media campaigns.” Nature Human Behavior.
“COVID-19 heightened women’s exposure to gender-based and intimate partner violence, especially in low-income and middle-income countries. We tested whether edutainment interventions shown to successfully combat gender-based and intimate partner violence when delivered in person can be effectively delivered using social (WhatsApp and Facebook) and traditional (TV) media. To do so, we randomized the mode of implementation of an intervention conducted by an Egyptian women’s rights organization seeking to support women amid COVID-19 social distancing. We found WhatsApp to be more effective in delivering the intervention than Facebook but no credible evidence of differences across outcomes between social media and TV dissemination. Our findings show little credible evidence that these campaigns affected women’s attitudes towards gender or marital equality or on the justifiability of violence. However, the campaign did increase women’s knowledge, hypothetical use and reported use of available resources.”
Guajardo, G., & Schwindt-Bayer, L. A. (2023). “Women’s Representation and Corruption: Evidence From Local Audits in Mexico.” Comparative Political Studies.
Whether corruption leads to the election of women and whether increased women’s representation leads to lower levels of corruption are two questions with answers that remain uncertain and context-dependent. We explore the case of Mexico and theorize that three factors—gender stereotypes, demands for the inclusion of women, and expectations of accountability—condition the relationship between women’s representation and corruption. We hypothesize that given the features of the Mexican system, revelations of corruption should lead to the election of women and women should not be less corrupt than men in office. Leveraging an original dataset of close to 20 years of municipal audits to mayors, we find supporting evidence. The occurrence of audits and recent revelations of corruption increase the likelihood of women being elected and municipalities led by women report no fewer irregularities as compared to those led by men.”
Szmer, J., Moyer, L., Haire, S., & Christensen, R. (2023). “Who Shapes the Law? Gender and Racial Bias in Judicial Citations.” American Political Science Review, 1-8.
“In this letter, we assess whether the contributions of judges from underrepresented groups are undervalued or overlooked, thereby reducing these judges’ influence on legal policy. Drawing on an original dataset of discretionary citations to over 2,000 published federal appellate decisions, we find that the majority of opinions written by female judges receive less attention from other courts than those by similarly situated men and that this is largely attributable to disparities in citing Black women and Latinas. We also find that additional efforts by Black and Latinx judges to ground their opinions in precedent yield a much lower rate of return in subsequent citations by outside circuits than comparable work by white men and women judges. This suggests that, despite gains in diversification in the federal judiciary, stereotypes about social identities will play a powerful role in determining whose ideas receive recognition.”