Constitutions and Gender Equality: A Cross-national Analysis

• In Event: Women's Lives and Constitutional Rights

Abstract

Feminist institutionalism is concerned with how institutions create, recreate, or challenge gendered power asymmetries (Krook and Mackay 2011; Chappell and Waylen 2013). Much of this literature focuses on effects of gender quotas, women’s policy agencies, and federalism. The effect of constitutional gender provisions, theoretically and empirically, has received less attention. Constitutions vary tremendously in how they treat gender difference and women’s rights. We examine how sex and gender difference is recognized in the constitution in roughly 100 countries over 20 years. Each constitution is coded systematically with respect to sex and gender-based rights and protections. This allows us to construct a typology of constitutions grounded in feminist theory as well as an index of egalitarian provisions. The statistical analysis uses both of these measures to test the relationship between the constitutional recognition of gender difference and scores on cross-national indicators of women’s political, economic and social status. Drawing on the literature on women’s rights and equality, we also include variables for women’s representation, political institutions, political culture, as well as variables that control for economic development and the rule of law.

Authors

• Priscilla A. Lambert, Western Michigan University

• Druscilla L. Scribner, University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh