Women's Political Representation: The Importance of Ideology

TLDR

Women’s participation at the highest political levels remains low, and while social structure, politics, and ideology have been cited as explanatory factors, prior cross‑national studies have not supported ideology’s role, partly due to inadequate measurement. The study aims to show that gender ideology strongly influences the number of women in national legislatures. The authors incorporate a newly available national gender ideology measure into a cross‑national model of women in legislatures. The analysis shows that precisely measured gender ideology strongly predicts differences in women’s representation in national legislatures.

Abstract

Women's low rate of participation at the highest levels of politics is an enduring problem in gender stratification. Previous cross-national research on women in national legislatures has stressed three explanations for differences in women's political representation: social structure, politics, and ideology. Despite strong theory suggesting the importance of ideology, it has not found support in previous cross-national statistical studies. But ideology has not been as well measured as structural and political factors. In this article, we demonstrate that gender ideology strongly affects the number of women in national legislatures. We do so by introducing a newly available measure of national gender ideology into a cross-national model of women in legislatures. We demonstrate that ideology, when measured more precisely, strongly predicts differences in women's political representation.