VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN, GENDER REPRESENTATION, AND

GENDER EMPOWERMENT

Ferdaouis Bagga

fb5195a@american.edu

American University

School of International Service

RESEARCH QUESTION

Basic premise: women help other women

Original RQ: Will there be less violence against women in a

state which has more female representation in its parliament/lower house?

Adjusted RQ: Will there be more substantive legislative action

on violence against women when the state has higher female empowerment?

An Australian researcher who says that women work harder in parliament.

HYPOTHESES Ha= Countries with higher levels of female empowerment

will feature more legislation on violence against women. Ho= There is no relationship between level of female

empowerment and legislation on violence against women.

BACKGROUND SOURCES Violence Against Women: An International Perspective, by

Johnson, H., Ollus, N, and Nevala, S. The European Institute for Crime Prevention and Control,

affiliated with the United Nations (HEUNI) IVAWS – commenced 2003, by 2005 11 countries

Escobar-Lemmon, M. & Taylor-Robinson, M. M. (2005). “Women Ministers in Latin American Government: When, Where, and Why?”

Iyer, L., Mani, A., Mishra, P., & Topalova, P. (2011). “The Power of Political Voice: Women’s Political Representation and Crime in India”

Tremblay, M. (1998). “Do Female MPs Substantively Represent Women? A Study of Legislative Behaviour in Canada’s 35th Parliament”

Yoon, M. Y. (2004). “Explaining Women’s Legislative Representation in Sub-Saharan Africa”

DESCRIPTION OF VARIABLES

1. Gender empowerment measure: “gem2005” From Human Development Report of 2007/2008 Assigns countries a value indicating how empowered

women are based on political, economic, and societal factors

Dependent

• Unit of Analysis = Country • LOM = Interval-Ratio

DESCRIPTION OF VARIABLES

1. Legislation on violence against women: “LegislationVAW” From OECD 2009 0=yes, 1=no

2. Percentage of women in parliament: “Women2008” From Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU)

3. Gender-related development index: “GDIValue2005” From UNDP Assesses life expectancy, adult literacy rate, gross

enrolment ratios, estimated income

Independent

IF DEPENDENT VARIABLE WAS “WOMEN2008”…

103 103 46 103 0.9569 0.0005 0.0003GDIValue2005 0.0054 -0.3371* 0.5102* 1.0000 50 50 50 0.0000 0.0036 gem2005 0.6557* -0.4046* 1.0000 116 117 0.1587Legislatio~W -0.1317 1.0000 116 Women2008 1.0000 Wom~2008 Legisl~W gem2005 GDI~2005

DATA… DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS

Variable Observations (N) Mean Standard

Deviation Min Max

gem2005 50 .50326 .1314866 .129 .761

LegislationVAW 117 .5793162 .242052 .08 1

Women2008 116 16.10172 9.332803 0 48.8

GDIValue2005 103 .6408835 .1610817 .32 .927

01

23

Den

sity

0 .2 .4 .6 .8Gender empowerment measure (GEM) value 2005 (UNDP 2007)

Source: Driving Democracy Crossnational Data, UNDP 2007

Gender Empowerment Measure

01

23

Den

sity

0 .2 .4 .6 .8 1LegislationVAW

Source: OECD, 2009 data

Legislation on Violence Against Women

GRAPH MATRIX

Genderempowerment

measure(GEM) value2005 (UNDP

2007)

LegislationVAW

Percentage ofwomen in the

Lower House ofParliament,2008 (IPU)

Gender-relateddevelopmentindex (GDI)value 2005

(UNDP 2007)

.2 .4 .6 .8

0

.5

1

0 .5 1

0

50

0 50

.4

.6

.8

1

Source: UNDP, IPU, OECD

Gender Empowerment vs. Legislation on VAW, Women in Parliament, and Gender Development

DATA… SAMPLE

LegislationVAW Women2008Afghanistan 1 27.7

Albania 0.75 7.1

Algeria 0.75 7.7

Angola 0.5 15

Argentina 0.25 40

Armenia 0.75 9.2

Azerbaijan 0.75 11.4

Bahrain 0.75 2.5

Bangladesh 0.08 15

Belarus 0.5 29.1

Benin 0.75 10.8

Bhutan 0.67 2.7

LINEAR REGRESSION ANALYSIS

-.3

-.2

-.1

0.1

.2R

esid

ual

s

.3 .4 .5 .6Fitted values

Residuals - Mortality Rate vs. GDP per Capita

Independent Variables

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3

Legislation on violence against women (LegislationVAW)

Coef: -.2404038 Sig: 0.005

Coef: -.2048335 Sig: 0.002

Coef: -.1431523 Sig: 0.024

Percentage of women in lower house of parliament (Women2008)

Coef: .0085186 Sig: 0.000

Coef: .008253 Sig: 0.000

Gender development index (GDI2005)

Coef: .4438792Sig: 0.000

Observations: 50 50 46

R-squared 0.12149 0.5477 0.7244

Using dependent variable gender empowerment measure (gem2005)

CONCLUSIONS & POLICY SUGGESTIONS There is a statistically significant relationship between the gender

empowerment variable and legislation on violence against women in all three models. Sample size is a problem, with less than half the world’s countries

represented by this data. The coefficient for legislation on violence against women appears

negative, but this is because the range of values is between 0 and 1, with 0 being the ideal “yes, there is legislation on violence against women.” Thus, when gender empowerment rises, the value of “LegislationVAW” decreases, getting closer to a solid yes, and countries more frequently have legislation on violence against women.

Model three is the strongest with an R2 of 0.7244, meaning that when percentage of women in parliament and level of gender development are also taken into account, there is a strong positive relationship.

When more women are empowered, especially politically, there will be more substantive legislative action to combat violence against women.