Political Elite Competition and the Post-Conflict Status of Women

Abstract

My book project research focuses on the status of women in post-conflict societies. Despitesubstantial international and local efforts to improve the status of women after civil wars end, we see enormous variation in outcomes – with great strides for women’s rights and gender equality made in states such as Liberia and Sierra Leone, and tepid progress in Chad and Sri Lanka, for example. I propose a novel theory of the role of electoral politics plays in explaining variation in gender equality outcomes in states emerging from civil conflict. I argue that electoral legislative competition amongst political elites, often a mix of incumbent and new actors mobilized by conflict, drives their incentives to address gender equality reform in post-conflict contexts as they seek to win the votes of the electorate, particularly women. To evaluate this argument, I first use cross-national, observational data to establish a relationship between elite political competition and women’s rights. I find a positive and statistically significant relationship between increased electoral competition and higher women’s rights levels, even when accounting for alternative mechanisms of supporting women’s rights. I complement this analysis by examining how elite competition has impacted expansion of inheritance rights and citizenship rights with a qualitative case study of Nepal. In this chapter, I use qualitative evidence including fieldwork interviews, newspapers, academic articles, and policy reports to demonstrate my causal theory to demonstrate how political competition has been a significant mechanism for securing gender equality outcomes in Nepal. Lastly, I examine barriers to the expansion of gender equality outcomes in post-conflict states by examining cases when domestic political competition incentivizes elites to shirk accountability for gender-based war crimes during postconflict politics. Overall, my book project addresses a critical challenge for global politics today and speaks to literature on gender and security, post-war political reform and politics more broadly.