No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
Women’s Representation and Capital Punishment
Abstract
Although the effects of women’s representation have received significant attention, existing research often emphasizes the impact of women’s representation on issues directly related to women. Researchers have devoted less attention to the influence of women legislators on policies that are not clearly related to gender. We argue that this gap in the literature is noteworthy for capital punishment policies, because researchers have frequently identified a gender gap in public attitudes toward the death penalty. Through an analysis of capital punishment laws in 125 countries, this study finds that women’s legislative representation is significantly correlated with the abolition of capital punishment.
... American and Canadian women tend to be more interested in offender rehabilitation and less supportive of punishment than are men (Applegate, Cullen, & Fisher, 2002;Gidengil, Blais, Nadeau, & Nevitte, 2003). In fact, some recent work indicates that women's legislative representation is positively correlated with the abolition of capital punishment (Moreland & Watson, 2016). Moreover, gender differences in attitudes toward foreign policy and military power have been found in most wealthy democracies, with women being more in favor of "altruistic" foreign policy (Fite, Genest, & Wilcox, 1990, p. 498) and less supportive of armed conflict/ military action (Eichenberg, 2003;Jelen et al., 1994;Shapiro & Mahajan, 1986;Togeby, 1994). ...
en Studies show that women and girls consistently demonstrate higher levels of concern for the environment than men and boys. Separately, research also indicates that women officeholders pay particular attention to the issues prioritized by their female constituents. Interestingly, despite the consistency of the gender gap in attitudes to environmental issues the literature has paid scant attention to the role of women officeholders in the adoption of environmental policy. The goal of this paper was to start to address that lacuna. Using pooled cross‐sectional time series analyses of environmental standards in 18 Western parliamentary democracies (1990–2012), our initial findings indicate women officeholders are associated with the adoption of higher environmental standards.
Abstract
zh
女性官员对环境政策产生的作用
研究表明，女性和女孩对环境问题的关心一直高于男性和男孩。此外，研究还表明，女性官员对那些由女性选民所优先重视的问题予以特别关注。有趣的是，除去不同性别对环境问题所持态度的持续性差异，现有文献却很少关注女性官员在采纳环境政策一事上所产生的作用。本文目的旨在填补此研究空白。通过对1990‐2012年间18个西方民主国家的环境标准进行（共享式）跨部门时间序列分析，本文得出的初期结果表明，女性官员与“采纳更高的环境标准”有关。
Abstract
es
Los efectos de las mujeres oficinistas en la política ambiental
los estudios muestran que las mujeres y las niñas demuestran consistentemente niveles más altos de preocupación por el medio ambiente que los hombres y los niños. Por separado, la investigación también indica que las mujeres que ocupan cargos públicos prestan especial atención a los temas priorizados por sus electoras. Curiosamente, a pesar de la consistencia de la brecha de género en las actitudes hacia los problemas ambientales, la literatura ha prestado poca atención al papel de las mujeres en la adopción de políticas ambientales. El objetivo de este trabajo es comenzar a abordar ese vacío. Usando análisis agrupados de series de tiempo de estándares ambientales en 18 democracias parlamentarias occidentales (1990‐2012), nuestros hallazgos iniciales indican que las mujeres en cargos públicos están asociadas con la adopción de estándares ambientales más altos.
Although the pacifying effect of gender equality is said to be a near-consensus, the causal mechanisms remain underspecified, and causal identification is weak. I address those shortcomings by providing the first causal evidence regarding the effects of women’s legislative representation on the state’s foreign military actions. I argue that women legislators affect foreign policies via legislative votes, and hence that the effect depends on whether military deployment requires legislative approval. I test the hypotheses by exploiting as-if random variation in mixed-gender close races and classifying the gender of 270,553 candidates in 253 legislative elections across 50 countries. The analysis indicates that women’s close victories reduced the state’s military actions but only with legislative veto power. The analysis of legislative votes also suggests that women legislators influenced other legislators and substantially reduced votes for military deployment. These results imply the crucial roles of legislatures in the gender-peace thesis.
Gender mainstreaming is the globally accepted strategy for sustainable development. The concepts of women empowerment, gender mainstreaming, and sustainable development are illustrated in this chapter. Numerous strategies are proposed from different parts of the globe, but these strategies are contextual in the sense that those applicable and successful in one country may not prove to be effective in another country. Since gender operates in innumerable subtle ways and its implications vary with time and space, the gender mainstreaming strategies also would vary accordingly. Women do not represent a homogenous group, and hence, the question of intersectionality should be of prime importance while designing strategies for women empowerment. The inclusion of all genders including transgender and other sexual minorities also should be taken care of to ensure sustainable development. The new dimensions and the shift in focus required with regard to the existing strategies of women empowerment are discussed in the chapter.
This introductory chapter provides an overall picture of the gender dimensions of Covid-19 in India vis-à-vis the global context. Though the crisis is impacting women and men in different ways, it affects women more severely because of the pre-existing inequalities in social, economic and political spheres. Data from international sources are used to illuminate the gendered impacts of the pandemic on the health sector, job market and education sector. It also examines the increase in unpaid care and domestic work and the escalating gender-based violence during the pandemic. The chapter highlights the need for gender-responsive policies firmly grounded on the principles of gender mainstreaming and effectively implemented with women’s strong positioning and authority at regional, national and global levels to create a more equal and resilient world.
This article investigates women’s political representation in a hybrid and patriarchal regime—Singapore. Specifically, it examines whether female legislators in Singapore put more emphasis on women’s rights and traditional women’s concerns than male legislators. We answer this question through conducting content analyses of the questions raised by legislators at the plenary meetings during the 10th–12th Parliaments of Singapore (2002–2015). Our results demonstrate that female legislators in Singapore were more likely to provide substantive representation on women’s interests than male legislators. Besides gender, this study shows that legislators’ political affiliation crucially affected the likelihood of them to represent traditional women’s concerns but not women’s rights. Opposition legislators were more likely than People’s Action Party legislators to ask questions on traditional women’s concerns. Finally, legislators’ ethnicity mattered, given that ethnic minority legislators (Malay, Indian and Eurasian legislators) were more likely to raise questions on women’s rights and traditional women’s concerns (except environment) than Chinese legislators.
Over the past decades, the research on life satisfaction has mushroomed. Within this strand, a new line of scholarly research has emerged that assesses the distribution of life satisfaction across nations. This study contributes to this avenue of research by assessing the relationship between the share of women in parliament and happiness distribution. Using data from 109 nations, we find that countries with a greater share of women in parliament are associated with more equal distribution of subjective wellbeing within society. This result remains robust even when we control for a rich set of determinants of life satisfaction.
La literatura ha demostrado la persistencia de una brecha de género en las actitudes sobre temas controvertidos que generalmente se asocian con una agenda de izquierdas: la pena de muerte, la garantía de los derechos humanos para delincuentes, los matrimonios entre personas del mismo sexo, la legalización de la marihuana y de la interrupción voluntaria del embarazo. Sin embargo, poco se sabe respecto a las actitudes de los líderes de los partidos sobre estos temas y su relevancia fuera de las democracias avanzadas. En particular, si la brecha de género también es válida para las mujeres líderes conservadoras. Este artículo analiza la posición sobre temas controvertidos dentro de la dirigencia de la coalición actual de gobierno, Chile Vamos. La coalición está principalmente formada por tres organizaciones diferentes, la Unión Demócrata Independiente (UDI), Renovación Nacional (RN) y la recientemente creada Evolución Política (Evópoli), que promueven valores, ideas e intereses con matices dentro del espectro liberal-conservador, pero se identifican con una ideología de centro-derecha. Usando datos originales de una encuesta representativa de las élites partidarias de la coalición a nivel nacional, regional y local, estimamos mediante una regresión logística con corrección de muestra finita si el género desempeña un papel en las actitudes sobre cinco temas controvertidos controlando por las características individuales como la edad, la religión y la educación, así como la membresía del partido y sensibilidad política. Nuestros hallazgos subrayan que el género suele ser importante y que las mujeres conservadoras tienden a tener posturas distintivas sobre algunos de estos temas. Estas diferencias sistemáticas suelen colocar a las mujeres en posiciones menos extremas con respecto a sus colegas masculinos y podrían tener un efecto moderador sobre la coalición de centro-derecha.
Feminists have celebrated success in gendering security discourse and practice since the end of the Cold War. Scholars have adapted theories of contentious politics to analyze how transnational feminist networks achieved this. I argue that such theories would be enhanced by richer conceptualizations of how transnational feminist networks produce and disseminate new forms of global governmental knowledge and expertise. This article engages social movement theory with theories of global governmentality. Governmentality analysis typically focuses upon governmental power rather than political contention or the collective agency of political outsiders. However, I argue that governmentality analysis contributes to an account of feminist influence on the fields of development and security within global politics. The governmentality lens views politics as a struggle over truth and expertise. Since experts have authority to speak the truth on a given issue, governmentality analysis seeks to uncover the social basis of expertise. Such analysis of expertise can illuminate important aspects of the power of movements. The power of transnational women's movements lies in production and dissemination of knowledge about women within global knowledge networks.
This paper examines the cases of 1017 homicide defendants in Florida. Two main data sources are used: the police department's classification of the case, as found in the FBI's Supplemental Homicide Reports, and the prosecutor's classification, as determined by court records. Each data set characterizes the homicide as involving felonious circumstances, possible felonious circumstances, or nonfelonious circumstances. Attention is focused on cases that differ in their police and prosecutorial classifications. Results indicate that differences in these classifications are related to defendant's and victim's race, with blacks accused of killing whites the most likely to be "upgraded" and the least likely to be "downgraded." The process of upgrading is then shown to significantly increase the likelihood of the imposition of a death sentence in cases with white victims where no plea bargain is offered.
Since 1996, death sentences in America have declined more than 60 percent, reversing a generation-long trend toward greater acceptance of capital punishment. In theory, most Americans continue to support the death penalty. But it is no longer seen as a theoretical matter. Prosecutors, judges, and juries across the country have moved in large numbers to give much greater credence to the possibility of mistakes -- mistakes that in this arena are potentially fatal. The discovery of innocence, documented here through painstaking analyses of media coverage and with newly developed methods, has led to historic shifts in public opinion and to a sharp decline in use of the death penalty by juries across the country. A social cascade, starting with legal clinics and innocence projects, has snowballed into a national phenomenon that may spell the end of the death penalty in America. © Frank R. Baumgartner, Suzanna L. De Boef, and Amber E. Boydstun, 2008.
The International Crime Victimisation Survey (ICVS) is the most far-reaching programme of fully standardised sample surveys looking at householders' experience of crime in different countries. The first ICVS took place in 1989, the second in 1992, and the third in 1996. Surveys have been carried out in over 50 countries since 1989, including a large number of city surveys in developing countries and countries in transition. This report deals with eleven industrialised countries which took part in the third sweep. The reason for setting up the ICVS was the inadequacy of other measures of crime across country. Figures of offences recorded by the police are problematic due to differences in the way the police define, record and count crime. And since most crimes the police know about are reported by victims, police figures can differ simply because of differences in reporting behaviour. It is also difficult to make comparisons of independently organised crime surveys, as these differ in design and coverage. For the countries covered in this report, interviews were mainly conducted by telephone (with samples selected through variants of random digit dialling). There is no reason to think results are biased because of the telephone mode. Response rates varied but we show that there is no overriding evidence that this affects the count of victimisation. Samples were usually of 1,000 or 2,000 people which means there is a fairly wide sampling error on the ICVS estimates. The surveys cannot, then, give precise estimates of crime in different countries. But they are a unique source of information and give good comparative information The results in this report relate mainly to respondents' experience of crime in 1995, the year prior to the 1996 survey. Those interviewed were asked about crimes they had experienced, whether or not reported to the police. The main results follow.
This article seeks to rethink how scholars have traditionally studied women's substantive representation. It outlines a framework that aims to replace questions like 'Do women represent women?' with ones like 'Who claims to act for women?' and 'Where, how, and why does the substantive representation of women occur?' Arguing that representation occurs both inside and outside legislative arenas, the article calls attention to the wide range of actors, sites, goal, and means that inform processes of substantive representation.
The study assessed gender differences in emotional responses to violent film. Both subjective emotional response and eye blink startle magnitude were assessed while 20 men and 20 women viewed a series of five violent film segments and five nature scenes. Participants exhibited higher levels of curiosity, anxiety, disgust, and anger, and lower levels of positive emotion and boredom in response to the violent film segments in comparison with the nature material. Startle response was magnified during the violent film segments, indicating an aversive response. Evidence that men and women responded to the violence differently was demonstrated by men' experiencing greater positive feelings, entertainment, and curiosity in relation to the violent film, whereas women reported more disgust, boredom, anger, and experienced greater startle in relation to the violent scenes portrayed in the film. Future directions for investigating filmed violence are outlined.
While there has been an increase in the number of women elected to state legislatures, little is known about the impact of gender on state legislation. A longitudinal analysis was conducted of bills proposed by individual legislators in the Arizona State Legislature between 1969 and 1986 to investigate the relationship of gender to public policy output. Women legislators were hypothesized, first, to initiate more bills in traditional women's interest areas than men; second, to initiate more bills on feminist issues than men; and third, to have less success in securing passage for their proposed bills than men. Drawing on Kanter's work in organizations, the proportion of women in the legislature was introduced as a control variable; a minimum of 15 percent was hypothesized to be necessary for women to function effectively in the legislature. Support was found for the first two hypotheses about women legislators' areas of policy specialization, but only after women held more than 15 percent of the legislative seats. The third hypothesis was not supported, but the reasons varied according to the percentage of seats occupied by women. This study suggests that proportional group size may be an important consideration in the evaluation of the impact of gender on public policy. Two statistical tables and a 36-item bibliography are included. (Author/JB)
Conducted a meta-analysis of studies of gender differences in aggression, based on the sample of studies in the E. E. Maccoby and C. N. Jacklin (1974) review and a recent sample of studies from 1978 to 1981, for a total of 143 studies. Meta-analysis techniques were also extended to applications of interest to developmental psychologists. The median value of ω–2 for gender differences in aggression was .05, and the median value of
d was .50, indicating that, although the differences appear fairly reliably, they are not large. There was a trend for gender differences to be smaller in recent studies. Gender differences tended to be larger in naturalistic, correlational studies than in experimental studies. Gender differences also tended to be larger when the method of measurement was direct observation, a projective test, or peer report, and smaller when self-reports or parent or teacher reports were used. Finally, there was a modest negative association between magnitude of gender differences and age. For studies in which mean Ss' age was 6 yrs or less, the median ω–2 was .07 and
d was .58; in contrast, for studies of college students the median ω–2 was .01 and
d was .27. Overall results indicate that approximately 5% of the variance in aggression is due to gender differences. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
A potential policy problem based on an actual study of prisons and recidivism rates was presented to 47 Colorado legislators during a taped interview that was later transcribed. Men and women in this study conceptualized the origins of and solutions to crime differently. These differences can be understood in terms of gendered socialization, experiences and opportunities in western societies. Women tended to see criminals as people interacting within the context of societal opportunities, while men tended to see criminals as autonomous individuals responsible for choosing a life of crime. These fundamentally different views of the origins of crime lead to distinctive policy solutions. Finally, the selfarticulated orientations were compared with all the actual crime and prison bills proposed in the 1989 session. The gender differences uncovered in the interviews were also found in actual policy proposals. However, women were less successful than men in passing their legislation.
Full the list of publications citing this article (n=101), please see my google scholar citation page, http://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=sM8NoacAAAAJ
The abstract for this document is available on CSA Illumina.To view the Abstract, click the Abstract button above the document title.
This essay proposes a framework to analyze cross-national variation in women's legal rights. To explore the distinct logics of policy change, we disaggregate sex equality policies on two dimensions: 1) whether they improve the status of women as a group or alleviate gender-based class inequalities, and 2) whether or not they challenge the doctrine of organized religion and the codified tradition of major cultural groups. We show that policies promoting gender equality seek fundamental social change and therefore challenge historical patterns of state-society interaction concerning relations between the state and the market; the respective authority of the state, religion, and cultural groups; and the contours of citizenship. Different issues, however, challenge different aspects of these relations. What's more, the priorities, strategies, and effectiveness of advocates and opponents of change (including women's movements, left parties, international NGOs, and organized religion) are shaped by state capacity, policy legacies, international vulnerability, and the degree of democracy.
‘It takes a critical mass of women, e.g. 30 percent, to make a difference in polities’ This statement is common today, even among women politicians themselves. However, the theory of the importance of the relative size of the minority has not been sufficiently developed in political science. Based on the experience of women in Scandinavian politics (today being a minority of about 30 percent), the article discusses six areas for which an increase in the proportion of the minority might lead to changes in for instance the political culture, the political discourse or the reaction to women as politicians. The article suggests that the concept of a critical mass is replaced by one of critical acts, which would seem to be more relevant when studying human beings.
More than fifty countries have adopted quota laws to regulate the selection or election of women to political office. This
suggests that states have begun to identify quotas as a new state-led strategy for incorporating women into public life and,
by extension, for promoting feminist aims to improve women's overall social, economic, and political status. This article
explores the reasons why quotas have been so readily adopted in diverse countries around the world, as well as possible implications
for women as political actors and for women as a group, to gauge the broader meaning of quotas for feminism in practice.
This is the 2002 third edition of William A. Schabas's highly praised study of the abolition of the death penalty in international law. Extensively revised to take account of developments in the field since publication of the second edition in 1997, the book details the progress of the international community away from the use of capital punishment, discussing in detail the abolition of the death penalty within the United Nations human rights system, international humanitarian law, European human rights law and Inter-American human rights law. New chapters in the third edition address capital punishment in African human rights law and in international criminal law. An extensive list of appendices contains many of the essential documents for the study of capital punishment in international law. The Abolition of the Death Penalty in International Law is introduced with a Foreword by Judge Gilbert Guillaume, President of the International Court of Justice.
We use multivariate analyses to test hypotheses concerning the elec toral opportunity structure for women across a twenty-year period of Canadian provincial elections. We find that party, political context, and social variables affect the likelihood that a woman is elected to a provin cial parliament. While similarities between U.S. state legislative elections and Canadian provincial elections are found, there are distinct differences across the two polities, especially concerning where women first made inroads in winning representation. While women first gained a beach- head in small amateur legislatures in rural states in the United States, in Canada they first won significant numbers of seats in metropolitan areas. We find there continues to be great differences across riding types with women doing much worse in rural ridings than either urban or metro politan ridings. The implications of these differences for redistricting are considered. Canadian courts have generally been sympathetic to plans that insure representation of geographic "communities of interest," even when this has meant overrepresentation of rural areas and under- representation of urban areas. We argue that a consequence of this policy is that Canadian provinces risk underrepresenting women, a nonterritorial "community of interest."
http://press.ecpr.eu/book_details.asp?bookTitleID=27
Gender and Elections offers a systematic, lively, multi-faceted account of the role of gender in the electoral process through the 2004 elections. This timely, yet enduring, volume strikes a balance between highlighting the most important developments for women as voters and candidates in the 2004 elections and providing a more long-term, in-depth analysis of the ways that gender has helped shape the contours and outcomes of electoral politics in the United States. Individual chapters demonstrate the importance of gender in understanding and interpreting presidential elections, voter participation and turnout, voting choices, congressional elections, the participation of African American women, the support of political parties and women’s organizations, candidate communications with voters, and state elections. Without question, this book is the most comprehensive, reliable, and trustworthy resource on the role of gender in electoral politics.
It was not long after the election of a record number of women to the House of Commons in 1997 that the backlash began. The criticism was all-encompassing: they wore the wrong clothes, they voted the wrong way and they were concerned with the wrong issues. Above all, they were accused of failing to make difference, to have failed women, and were dismissed by some as 'Blair's Babes'. Drawing on in-depth interviews with more than half of the new Labour women MPs, Sarah Childs reveals how these women actually experienced being MPs, and explores whether they acted for and like women - in their constituencies, in parliament and in government. She presents important insights into theories of women's political representation, showing that the relationship between women's descriptive and substantive representation is complicated, that party and gender identities are crucial, that women's differences must be acknowledged and that it might not always be possible for women representatives to act for women even if they want to. Including a key section on women's selection for parliament; whether women MPs act as role models; why it is important that women should be present in politics; as well as exploring in depth the subject of women's substantive representation, New Labour's Women MPs is essential reading for all those interested in women and politics, legislative studies, political behaviour and representation.
Determinants of the Death Penalty seeks to explain the phenomenon of capital punishment - without recourse to value judgements - by identifying those characteristics common to countries that use the death penalty and those that mark countries which do not. This global study uses statistical analysis to relate the popularity of the death penalty to physical, cultural, social, economical, institutional, actor oriented and historical factors. Separate studies are conducted for democracies and non-democracies and within four regional contexts. The book also contains an in-depth investigation into determinants of the death penalty in the USA.
Many hypothesize that the election of more women to the U.S. Congress is more than simply an issue of equity, but will make a substantive policy difference. I test this hypothesis by analyzing the voting records of all representatives in the 103d Congress on a set of women's issues. It is my premise that women will not necessarily exhibit a more liberal ideology than their male counterparts on all issues; however, the more directly an issue affects women, the more likely it is that women will vote together across party lines. The results of regression analysis on the composite score of women's issue votes indicate that gender exerts a significant and independent effect on voting for women's issues in the face of controls for other major influences on congressional voting These influences include constituency factors, party, personal characteristics, and ideology. Interaction terms for gender by party indicate that much of the impact of gender is due to the influence of Republican women. Logit analysis of the individual votes demonstrates that the gender of the representative was most significant on votes that dealt with abortion and women's health. The influence of gender was overwhelmed by other factors such as party, ideology, and constituency concerns on votes that were less directly related to women, such as education.
As I write this essay in the summer of 2000, the death penalty is beginning to undergo a profound reexamination in this country. In particular, Americans are troubled by growing evidence that innocent individuals have been convicted and sentenced to death. The issue of innocence, in conjunction with concerns about high reversal rates, prosecutorial misconduct, and inadequate provision of defense counsel, has caused one governor, a multitude of city councils, and legal organizations across the country to call for a moratorium on the death penalty. In this essay, I suggest a different and particularly feminist reason for reexamining, and rejecting, the death penalty. The death penalty perverts society's response to the tragedy of a woman being raped and murdered by relying on a form of racism that is gendered in nature and by making the horrific nature of the crime of rape-murder a more important consideration in determining punishment than the individual characteristics of the person who committed it.
Cross-national research has increased in the past few decades, resulting in a large body of empirical research. In particular, cross-national studies are often limited in data sources, which restrict variable selection to debatable proxy indicators. This study therefore uses meta-analytic techniques to examine major cross-national predictors of homicide to determine strengths and weaknesses in theory and design. The findings indicate several critical limitations to cross-national research, including biased sample composition, a lack of theoretical clarity in predictor operationalizations, and an overwhelming reliance on cross-sectional design. The predictors that showed the strongest mean effects were Latin American regional dummy variables, income inequality indicators and the Decommodification Index. Conversely, static population indicators, democracy indices, and measures of economic development had the weakest effects on homicide.
The U.S. crime rate has dropped steadily for more than a decade, yet the rate of incarceration continues to skyrocket. Today, more than 2 million Americans are locked in prisons and jails with devastating consequences for poor families and communities, overcrowded institutions and overburdened taxpayers. How did the U.S. become the world's leader in incarceration? Why have the numbers of women, juveniles, and people of color increased especially rapidly among the imprisoned? The Politics of Injustice: Crime and Punishment in America, Second Edition is the first book to make widely accessible the new research on crime as a political and cultural issue. Katherine Beckett and Theodore Sasson provide readers with a robust analysis of the roles of crime, politics, media imagery and citizen activism in the making of criminal justice policy in the age of mass incarceration.is the first book to make widely accessible the new research on crime as a political and cultural issue. Katherine Beckett and Theodore Sasson provide readers with a robust analysis of the roles of crime, politics, media imagery and citizen activism in the making of criminal justice policy in the age of mass incarceration.
This article introduces a large new cross-country database, the Database of Political Institutions. It covers 177 countries over 21 years, 1975-95. The article presents the intuition, construction, and definitions of the different variables. Among the novel variables introduced are several measures of checks and balances, tenure and stability, identification of party affiliation with government or opposition, and fragmentation of opposition and government parties in the legislature.
Obra que reconstruye el origen y evolución de las actuales redes transnacionales que, con la utilización de las nuevas tecnologías informativas como recurso organizador y aglutinador, han logrado constituirse en movimientos más o menos presionadores en la defensa de los derechos humanos, de la protección ambiental y de una mayor equidad de género, entre otros.
This article examines the content and success rate of constitutional changes relating to women's issues that were proposed in the 50 states between 1977 and 1985. Women's issues are defined as those that impact disproportionately on women as a consequence of demographic, socioeconomic, biological, or attitudinal and policy preference patterns. The results show that change proposals benefiting women have been most successful in the economic (taxation, pensions), personal safety (victims' rights, individual right to self defense, restrictions on bail and release of repeat offenders [especially for sexual and violent crimes]), suffrage,health, and gender and racially neutral language arenas. Slightly lower but still relatively high success rates are observable with regard to civil rights and civil liberties issues. Successes were greater when proposals targeted rights or services for the elderly (e.g., economic, taxation and retirement, health, and some housing) but were less common when they specifically singled out the poor (e.g., housing). (Women make up a disproportionate percentage of each of these groups, the elderly and the poor.) The study shows also that constitutional changes proposed through the formal citizen-intiative process were less likely to be approved than those submitted by state legislatures or constitutional conventions. But many of the defeated citizen-intiative proposals-especially in the health, education, and personal safety areas-proposed government funding or support for private sector ventures.
This paper proposes that findings in existing literature concerning the policy priorities of women legislators in Nordic countries, the United States, and Argentina may also be generalized to less developed countries where support for women in politics is minimal. Past studies in countries where women have achieved comparatively high levels of representation report that women legislators show a higher legislative priority on issues concerning women's rights and children and families. Using data on bill initiation, this paper analyzes gender differences in the Honduran Congress from the 1990-93 and 1994-97 terms. Findings are similar to previous studies in that women appear to place a higher priority on women's rights issues; however, we find that women do not have a higher priority than men on children's and family issues. Examination of bill debate shows that women are more frequent participants in debates of bills involving women's rights and children's and family issues than of bills concerning issues that have traditionally concerned men
The recent push for more women parliamentarians around the world via positive action measures such as gender quotas naturally begs the question of whether the increased descriptive representation of women in parliament is making a substantive difference, in terms of the types of policies passed, behavioral norms, and procedures. How does the substantive representation of women take place? One way of measuring gendered impacts in politics is to look at the participation of Members of Parliament (MPs) in formal, parliamentary debate on key policy issues. It is reasonable to assume that one (though certainly not the only) measure of a good MP is his or her ability to contribute his or her voice and thoughts to public policy debates in parliament. Furthermore, if we consider women MPs representative of women in particular as a marginalized group, making their voices heard in parliamentary debates is perhaps one of the best ways of acting for women. As Melissa Williams (1998, 138) argues, the unique voice of women is a necessary component for women's political equality:. © 2009, The Women and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association. All rights reserved.
The abstract for this document is available on CSA Illumina.To view the Abstract, click the Abstract button above the document title.
Research on women and representation has argued that women who serve
in “skewed” legislatures—that is, legislatures in which
women make up less than 15% of the membership—avoid addressing
women's interests and are marginalized by other legislators. I argue
that women in such legislatures may actually be encouraged to develop
legislative agendas that are distinct from those of their male colleagues,
and that they may be as successful as their male counterparts. Analyzing
data from three state legislatures in four years, I find that even in
extremely skewed state legislatures, women are generally more active than
men in sponsoring legislation that focuses on women's interests;
indeed, in two of the three states, gender differences narrow as the
legislature becomes more gender balanced. Second, I find that women are
generally as successful as men in passing the legislation that they
sponsor, and that in very homogeneous settings, they are sometimes more
successful than men. Moreover, little evidence exists that they are less
likely to be appointed to leadership positions. Finally, I find that
increasing gender diversity within a legislature is accompanied by a
greater overall focus on women's issues. I conclude that a
“critical mass” is not necessary for substantive
representation on the part of individual female state legislators, but
that increased diversity may indeed bring about changes in policy outputs
that reflect the interests of women.
This paper suggests that the findings of the literature on gender differences in legislator policy priorities in advanced industrial democracies very well may be generalizable to nations in the developing world, particularly those in Latin America. Previous studies of gender differences in legislator policy priorities have been confined to a small number of advanced industrial democracies. These studies have found women legislators to give a higher degree of priority than men to policies in the thematic areas of women's rights and children and families. Employing data on bill introduction, this paper tests for and finds similar gender differences in the Argentine Chamber of Deputies and the United States House of Representatives. Significant gender differences were found in both national legislatures in the areas of women's rights and children and families. No significant gender differences were found in other areas widely considered to be of traditional interest to women.
This article explores why women are rarely executed and examines the execution of four women in the Post-Furman Era, focusing on the execution of Karla Faye Tucker.
In this Article, I will review the matrix in which executive decisions in women's capital clemency cases are made, a matrix supplied by modern equal protection law, the nature and scope of the clemency power, gender politics, and contemporary death row. I will then conduct two thought experiments. Each invented case tests the relevance of gender in legally and politically acceptable contemporary clemency decisions. The goal is to understand the politics and law of granting or denying that very rare boon-commutation of sentence - to a female death row prisoner. The exercise offers support for two conclusions. In the age of formal equality, women cannot be granted clemency simply because they are women. The rhetoric of chivalry is untenable for the contemporary executive. A governor who is courageous and rhetorically skillful, however, can sometimes successfully defend the commutation of the death sentence of a woman as a proper use of the power to grant mercy, done for her sake, the class she exemplifies, the conscience of the governor, and the public.