When and why do governments adopt policies to promote gender equality and advance womens rights? Womens rights have a critical impact on democracy, economic prosperity, and the health and survival of children, but vary dramatically across societies in puzzling ways. Wealthy, industrialized countries, for example, are not necessarily more likely to adopt gender equality policies than poorer ones, and greater democracy sometimes leads to worse policies for women. What is more, governments that adopt gender equality policies in one area (such as violence against women) may resist adopting such policies in another policy issue-area (such as maternity leave).
To understand the causes of change in womens rights, this project creates a database of policies in 70 countries representing all world regions, levels of economic development, and degrees of democracy. The database includes information on gender equality policies as well as political, socioeconomic, and cultural indicators at four points in time (1975, 1985, 1995, and 2005.) Focusing on a range of areas including family law; the legality and availability of contraceptives and abortion; policy on domestic violence; policies to promote political representation; and social policies affecting working parents, such as leave, day care, and child allowances, it includes more womens rights issues across a wider range of countries than any existing analysis.
The database is used to evaluate different explanations for why governments promote womens rights. Specifically, the project shows that: 1) the causes and processes of change vary across different gender equality policies (issue distinctiveness); and 2) the forces advocating change, and those resisting it (political agents), are more and less powerful in different political contexts (agent- context interaction).
In many Third World countries, profound inequality threatens womens lives and dignity. Even in many advanced democracies, equal rights for women remain a distant ambition. For these reasons, and because improving the status of women deepens democracy, promotes economic prosperity and helps children, promoting gender equality has become a priority of many international organizations and national governments. This study has broad impacts in that it will help national governments, international institutions, and womens and human rights organizations better understand the politics of gender equality, enabling them to design better strategies on behalf of women everywhere.
