This article reports the results of a survey of women in legislatures and executives around the world as they were constituted in 1998 (N = 180). The chief hypotheses regarding the factors hindering or facilitating women's access to political representation were tested by multivariate regression models. The regression models juxtaposed a cocktail of institutional, political, cultural, and socioeconomic variables with the following dependent variables: (1) the percentage of MPs who are women and (2) the percentage of cabinet ministers who are women.A number, although not all, of the cited hypotheses were statistically confirmed and more finely quantified. The socioeconomic development of women in society has an effect on the number of women in parliament but not in the cabinet. A country's length of experience with multipartyism and women's enfranchisement correlates with both the legislative and the executive percentage. Certain electoral systems are more women friendly than others. The ideological nature of the party system affects the number of women elected and chosen for cabinet posts. And last, the state's dominant religion, taken as a proxy for culture, also statistically relates to the number of women who will make it to high political office. However, other long-held hypotheses were not proved. The degree of democracy is not a good indicator of the percentage of women who will make it into the legislature or the cabinet, nor is the dichotomy between a presidential or parliamentary system.

Background: This study sought to inductively derive core themes of religion and=or spirituality (R=S) active in patients' experiences of advanced cancer to inform the development of spiritual care interventions in the terminally ill cancer setting. Methods: This is a multisite, cross-sectional, mixed-methods study of randomly-selected patients with advanced cancer (n ¼ 68). Scripted interviews assessed the role of R=S and R=S concerns encountered in the advanced cancer experience. Qualitative and quantitative data were analyzed. Theme extraction was performed with interdisciplinary input (sociology of religion, medicine, theology), utilizing grounded theory. Spearman correlations determined the degree of association between R=S themes. Predictors of R=S concerns were assessed using linear regression and analysis of variance. Results: Most participants (n ¼ 53, 78%) stated that R=S had been important to the cancer experience. In descriptions of how R=S was related to the cancer experience, five primary R=S themes emerged: coping, practices, beliefs, transformation, and community. Most interviews (75%) contained two or more R=S themes, with 45% mentioning three or more R=S themes. Multiple significant subtheme interrelationships were noted between the primary R=S themes. Most participants (85%) identified 1 or more R=S concerns, with types of R=S concerns spanning the five R=S themes. Younger, more religious, and more spiritual patients identified R=S concerns more frequently (b ¼ À0.11, p < 0.001; b ¼ 0.83, p ¼ 0.03; and b ¼ 0.89, p ¼ 0.04, respectively). Conclusions: R=S plays a variety of important and inter-related roles for most advanced cancer patients. Future research is needed to determine how spiritual care can incorporate these five themes and address R=S concerns.

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This article focuses on the link between the representation of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in national legislatures and the existence of equality laws focused on sexual orientation. It addresses three interrelated questions: how many “out” LGBT legislators have served in national parliaments, what explains the cross-national variation in their legislative presence, and what is the relationship between the presence of gay legislators and the enactment of laws that treat gay and straight citizens equally? There is an established literature arguing that the representation of women and ethnic minorities “descriptively” in national legislatures improves the realization of their policy preferences and the position of the group within the society as a whole. This article draws on that literature and extends the analysis to LGBT communities. It finds that the presence of even a small number of openly gay legislators is associated significantly with the future passage of enhanced gay rights, even after including controls for social values, democracy, government ideology, and electoral system design. Once openly gay legislators are in office they have a transformative effect on the views and voting behavior of their straight colleagues. This “familiarity through presence” effect is echoed in studies of U.S. state legislatures and levels of social tolerance of homosexuality in the population at large.

As competitive democracy is crafted in ethnically plural and postconflict nation‐states, the question of whether or not to reserve legislative seats for communal groups—ethnic, national, or religious—is increasingly a topic of debate. This research note provides an overview of targeted electoral mechanisms designed to ensure the inclusion in national parliaments of representatives of ethnic, racial, national, or religious communities. The data show that the existence of reserved seats in national legislatures for such groups is much more widespread, and less idiosyncratic, than many scholars previously thought. This finding, along with current discussions in high‐profile cases of constitutional design, suggests that the occurrence and impact of reserved seats should be analyzed in greater detail.