The Influence of Women’s Descriptive Representation and Gender Quotas on Public Gender Egalitarianism: Evidence from Time-Series Cross-National Analysis

Abstract

The entrance of women into politics and the global diffusion of gender quotas lead scholars to pay more attention on the role of women’s descriptive representation and gender quotas in determining the public gender egalitarian attitude. While previous literature have long analyzed the influence of the two factors on gender and politics, to one’s surprise, how those factors – i. e. women’s descriptive representation and gender quotas in political institutions – interact each other and have influence on public attitudes has not been studied thoroughly. To contribute to the existing studies, this article aims to answer the research question about the conditioning role of gender quotas in determining the impacts of women’s descriptive representation on the public gender egalitarianism. This article analyzes 112 countries from 1980 to 2018 to unveil the conditional relationship. Applying panel regression models, this article demonstrates that women’s descriptive representation tends to improve public gender egalitarian attitude. More interestingly, the empirical results with interaction terms indicate that the positive influence of women’s descriptive representation is not statistically meaningful with the existence of reserved seats gender quotas. The findings of this article urge scholars to pay more attention to less obtrusive methods rather than gender quotas to improve women’s descriptive representation.