期刊名称:Socius: Sociological Research For a Dynamic World
印刷版ISSN:2378-0231
出版年度:2018
卷号:4
期号:4
DOI:10.1177/2378023117735271
语种:English
出版社:SAGE Publications
摘要:Women’s representation in legislative and executive offices has increased in recent decades. We show, though, that while global legislative and executive trend lines have positive slopes, the two institutions experience distinctive temporal dynamics. When levels of women’s legislative representation rise, they tend not to slip back beyond their newly achieved level—women’s legislative representation tends to be characterized by a ratchet effect. This effect is relatively rare in cabinets, where increases in women’s representation are often followed by decreases. We call the latter phenomenon the see-saw effect: Countries experience one or more steps back for every step forward. These differences have normative and analytical implications. Normatively, we suggest that cabinet see-sawing is particularly problematic when domestic power balances are weighted toward executives. Analytically, we encourage researchers to use indicators of women’s empowerment that account for time and inter-institutional balances and identify factors that affect cross-country variation in temporal trends.
关键词:executive politics; gender and politics; legislative politics; women’s political empowerment