datadrivendecisions-blog

[datadrivendecisions-blog]

Does female empowerment drives democracy or is an outcome of the latter ?

I am interested in studying whether female empowerment leads to democratic development or if democratic development drive the social female empowerment. In other words interested in finding out the association of the form of government and female empowerment variables; and also check the causality/reverse causality if any.

To study this  I have selected the Gapminder data set. 

Will be using Polity score variable from the gapminder data-set as indicative of democratic development and female employment rate variable as indicative female empowerment.

Hypothesis: Female Empowerment has a positive causal effect on democratic development; and this should reflect in the analysis of the variables and polity score and Female employment rate. 

(Have created a separate data file from gapminder date-set with variables polityscore and femaleemployrate.)

Literature Review-

1.  Female Empowerment as a Core Driver of Democratic Development: A Dynamic Panel Model from 1980 to 2005-Paula Wyndow, Jianghong Li and  Eugen Mattes :- This study concludes that there are empirical evidence that female empowerment has a causal effect on democratic development.

2. Modernization, cultural change, and the persistence of traditional values-Inglehart and Baker (2000) and Inglehart and Welzel (2009, 2010):   They propose that gains in economic security and development shift people’s focus from survival to selfexpression values, such as trust, tolerance, political activism, support for gender equality, and emphasis on freedom of expression.

and

Gender equality and democracy- Inglehart, R., Norris, P., & Welzel, C. (2002). -Rather than being a consequence of democratic transition, these authors suggest that gender equality is an important part of the broad cultural changes taking place that supports the spread of democracy 

Implicit in these studies is the presumption that both gender equality and democratic development occur as a consequence of economic development.

3. Islam, authoritarianism, and female empowerment—What are the linkages?Donno, D., & Russett, B. (2004).- They found that the indicators of women’s rights had no causal or independent effect on regime type.

4. Oil, Islam, and women. American Political Science Review : Ross, M. L. (2008) - Women’s exclusion from the labor force appears to be a key factor in explaining the persistence of autocratic regimes in Muslim countries

The following gives good support towards using female employment rate as indicative of female empowerment-

The expansion of economic rights for women is an important tool for female empowerment and raising women’s status (Blumberg, 1984, 2007; Chafetz, 1990; Collins, Chafetz, Blumberg, Coltrane, & Turner, 1993).

Female labor force participation, like education, appears to play an important role in raising women’s political consciousness (Iversen & Rosenbluth, 2008; Ross, 2006; Staeheli & Cope, 1994)

Looking forward to further analysis of the data.