{"id":18948,"date":"2022-02-16T10:08:32","date_gmt":"2022-02-16T15:08:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/?p=18948"},"modified":"2022-02-16T10:08:32","modified_gmt":"2022-02-16T15:08:32","slug":"chart-of-the-week-tracking-female-political-and-economic-exclusion-across-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/2022\/02\/16\/chart-of-the-week-tracking-female-political-and-economic-exclusion-across-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Chart of the Week: Tracking Female Political and Economic Exclusion Across the World"},"content":{"rendered":"

By <\/span>Emanne Khan<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

The global COVID-19 pandemic, now entering its second year, has upended nearly every aspect of daily life. Large sectors of the labor force transitioned to partially or fully remote work, and other sectors have been hollowed out by layoffs. Women were differentially affected by the economic dynamics and new social demands which emerged amidst the pandemic: consultancy firm McKinsey reported in <\/span>March 2021<\/span> that one in four<\/a> American women were considering leaving the workforce or scaling back their careers as compared to one in five men, and the Brookings Institution reported in <\/span>October 2020<\/span><\/a> that mothers of young children lost 2.2 million jobs that year as compared to 870,000 jobs lost by fathers.<\/span><\/p>\n

While the past two years saw women around the world face a grave new set of challenges, recent research by <\/span>Rachel Brul\u00e9<\/span><\/a> illuminates the ways women were excluded from full economic rights even before the pandemic. In her 2020 book published by Cambridge University Press, <\/span>Women, Power and Property: The Paradox of Gender Equality Laws in India<\/i><\/a><\/strong>, Brul\u00e9 explores the relationship between political representation and economic empowerment, investigating how India\u2019s quotas for women as heads of local elected government have altered women\u2019s effective claims to fundamental economic rights to inherit property.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This Chart of the Week, featuring Figure 8.1 from Brul\u00e9\u2019s book, identifies trends in women\u2019s political participation (in red) and economic rights (in blue) in four regions of the world between 2009-2016:<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Source: <\/span>Women, Power and Property: The Paradox of Gender Equality Laws in India<\/a>, <\/span><\/i>Rachel Brul\u00e9, Cambridge University Press, 2020.<\/span><\/p>\n

Brul\u00e9 measured women\u2019s political participation as the percentage of female mayors in each region, compiled f<\/span>rom country-specific sources: the Center for American Women and Politics data on the US Conference of Mayors, European Institute for Gender Equality (2019), Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (2019) and Statistics South Africa (2016).<\/span> Her measure for economic rights\u2013the World Bank\u2019s \u201cWomen in Business and Law\u201d (WBL) index\u2013was formulated using data on the degree to which legal statutes differentially constrain women\u2019s economic decisions on a scale ranging from 0 (complete discrimination) to 100 (complete equality).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Women, power, property and \u2026 progress?<\/b><\/p>\n

The data is illuminating, both in terms of the low ceiling of women\u2019s political achievement globally, as well where it does (and doesn\u2019t) track with women\u2019s economic rights: in none of the four regions studied does the percentage of female mayors top 40 percent, and in none of the four regions does the WBL index top 95. The pessimistic read is that in much of the world, women hold fewer seats than men in local government and have yet to achieve full economic equality.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, the chart also offers cause for hope: in Latin America and the Caribbean, South Africa and the European Union, women\u2019s representation in local government is positively correlated with growing levels of economic rights. In other words, as the red line (women\u2019s local political representation) rises, so does the blue (women\u2019s economic rights get closer to parity with those of men).<\/span><\/p>\n

In <\/span>Women, Power and Property, <\/span><\/i>Brul\u00e9 identifies quotas for women in government as the bridge linking increased political representation to greater economic rights. Drawing on India as a case study, which has mandated<\/a> that a third of seats in local government be reserved for women <\/span>since 1993<\/span>, Brul\u00e9 argues quotas empower women to hold pivotal seats at the head of local government where they serve as \u201cgatekeepers,\u201d catalyzing enforcement of women\u2019s rights to inherit property and therefore improving the economic wellbeing of women in their community.<\/span><\/p>\n

If women\u2019s representation in local government is positively associated with economic rights, why, then, does the United States stand out as an exception? The chart shows that even as the percentage of female mayors in the US has generally trended upwards since 2009, the WBL index has remained static. Brul\u00e9 has a theory for that, too: she writes that the US\u2019s lack of affirmative action policies on women\u2019s behalf\u2013including quotas for women in government\u2013contributes to the reality that women\u2019s representation is tenuous \u2013 rising and falling over time \u2013 with a clear economic consequence: women\u2019s economic rights are more limited in the US than in South Africa and the EU, both of which use quotas.<\/span><\/p>\n

Quotas are not an end-all-be-all solution to women\u2019s exclusion from local government and access to economic rights. There is still much progress to be made until women enjoy full political representation and economic freedom, particularly with progress stalled<\/a> or rolled back by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Nevertheless, Brul\u00e9\u2019s research serves as a reminder that mechanisms exist to help create positive change for women across the world.<\/span><\/p>\nRead the Book<\/a>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Emanne Khan The global COVID-19 pandemic, now entering its second year, has upended nearly every aspect of daily life. Large sectors of the labor force transitioned to partially or fully remote work, and other sectors have been hollowed out by layoffs. Women were differentially affected by the economic dynamics and new social demands which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18806,"featured_media":18952,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[398,156,126,1076,131,166,301],"tags":[147,1618,1464,529,389,1024,986,423,549,966,781,1036,513,1438,689,515,1350,489,964,871,607,514,1735,1105,965,962,1734],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18948"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18806"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18948"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18948\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18974,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18948\/revisions\/18974"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/gdp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}