Replication Data for: The Effects of Electoral Violence on Women’s Legislative Representation

Despite global expansion in women’s access to political leadership in recent decades, female parliamentarians remain a distinct minority in most national legislatures. Previous studies have linked women’s descriptive representation to international and domestic security threats, such as international war and transnational terrorist campaigns. However, existing research has overlooked how the turbulence, unrest, and violence often associated with the election process itself may produce gendered electoral outcomes. I argue that violent contention in the period immediately preceding elections introduces gendered distortions to the political recruitment process that determines the gender composition of legislatures. The cumulative effect of these distortions is a reduction in the proportion of legislative seats subsequently held by women. To evaluate my hypothesis, I analyze data from 620 nominally competitive legislative elections in 128 countries between 1990 and 2012. Consistent with expectations, the results suggest that higher levels of election-related violence are associated with lower rates of women's descriptive representation.

近数十年来，尽管全球范围内女性获取政治领导职位的渠道不断拓展，但在多数国家议会中，女性议员仍属于显著少数群体。既往研究已将女性的描述性代表（descriptive representation）与国际、国内安全威胁（如国际战争与跨国恐怖主义活动）联系起来。然而，现有研究却忽略了选举进程本身常伴随的动荡、骚乱与暴力，如何催生带有性别分化特征的选举结果。本文认为，选举前夕爆发的暴力冲突，会对决定议会性别构成的政治吸纳进程造成带有性别偏向的扭曲。这类扭曲的累积效应，会导致后续女性占据的议会席位比例下降。为验证本文提出的假说，作者分析了1990年至2012年间128个国家的620场名义上具有竞争性的议会选举数据。与预期相符，研究结果显示，与选举相关的暴力程度越高，女性的描述性代表比例就越低。