Work

Ratchets and See-Saws: Divergent Institutional Patterns in Women’s Political Representation

Year: 2018

Type: article

Abstract: Women’s representation in legislative and executive offices has increased in recent decades. We show, though, that while global legislative and executive trend lines have positive slopes, the two institutions experience distinctive temporal dynamics. When levels of women’s legislative representation rise, they tend not to slip back beyond their newly achieved level—women’s legislative representation tends to be characterized by a ratchet effect. This effect is relatively rare in cabinets, where increases in women’s representation are often followed by decreases. We call the latter phenomenon the see-saw effect: Countries experience one or more steps back for every step forward. These differences have normative and analytical implications. Normatively, we suggest that cabinet see-sawing is particularly problematic when domestic power balances are weighted toward executives. Analytically, we encourage researchers to use indicators of women’s empowerment that account for time and inter-institutional balances and identify factors that affect cross-country variation in temporal trends.

Source: Socius Sociological Research for a Dynamic World

DOI: 10.1177/2378023117735271

Authors: John A. Scherpereel, Melinda Adams, Suraj Jacob

Institutions: James Madison University, Azim Premji University

Language: English

Topic: Gender Politics and Representation

Subfield: Gender Studies

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDGs: Peace, justice, and strong institutions, Gender equality, Reduced inequalities

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $1,000