Global De-Democratization and Women’s Political Empowerment in the 2000s

Abstract

Since 2000, democratic backsliding led to changes in the gender regime, a deterioration in gender equality, and a decline of women's empowerment demonstrated in many country studies and small-N comparisons. Given the lack of large-N cross-national analyses, this paper seeks to close the gap by examining the impact of dedemocratization on women's political empowerment by comparing 162 countries. The findings highlight that lower levels of democracy are associated with lower levels of women's political empowerment. Indeed, not only cross-national, but also within-country changes in democracy levels have substantial short-term and long-term effects on women's political empowerment. Although securing representative democracy with free political parties, free and fair elections, or an effective parliament is important to politically empower women, this study demonstrates that women's political empowerment is sustained in countries where the rule of law and participatory democratic rule are strongly consolidated.