Driving Forces behind Gender Equality - A Cross-Country Comparison

Abstract

There is a growing body of research acknowledging the lack of good cross-country comparisons that contribute to the understanding of what drives change in society, i.e. what make some countries more gender equal than others. In this essay, five explanatory factors—the number of women in elected office, gender sensitive legislation, the level of corruption, government effectiveness, and the level of democracy in a country—are tested in a regression analysis. Gender equality refers to women’s position in their everyday life. The results show that the well-established notion that a high number of women in elected office is related to a high level of gender equality has to be revised. We suggest that a current world-wide quota trend has resulted in an increased divergence between the number of women in elected office and the status of women in society more generally.