The Appointment of Women to Authoritarian Cabinets in Africa

Abstract

What explains variation in the inclusion of women in authoritarian cabinets? We theorize that leaders of electoral autocracies are affected by changing international norms of democracy and women's rights to appoint women ministers. We propose two hypotheses. First, increasing dependence on aid from democratic donors encourages leaders of electoral autocracies to appoint more women ministers. Second, electoral autocrats uprooting democratic traits appoint more women ministers to minimize the reputational costs of their autocratization. Using data from authoritarian regimes in 38 African countries between 1973 and 2013, we find that increases in aid from democracies are associated with modest increases in women's share of cabinet seats. As our theory suggests, this relationship holds only in electoral autocracies in more recent years when norms of gender equality have been strongest. Conversely, we find no evidence that autocratization periods are associated with increases in women's cabinet share. Additionally, we show that supply-side factors and the politics of multi-ethnic coalition building appear to explain differences in women's cabinet seat share in autocracies.

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“…Las variables institucionales y la RGGG a. La participación de las mujeres en los congresos La variable institucional más ampliamente estudiada (30 trabajos) es el efecto que la proporción de mujeres en los parlamentos o congresos tiene sobre su representación en los gabinetes, ya sea como una de las variables independientes principales (Adams et al, 2016;Barnes & Jones, 2011;Basabe-Serrano, 2020;Bego, 2014;Gatto et al, 2022;Liu & Banaszak, 2017;Sotomayor Valarezo & Huertas-Hernández, 2021;Stockemer, 2017) o como variable de control (Arriola & Johnson, 2014;Barnes & O'Brien, 2018;Högström, 2012;Kroeger & Kang, 2022;Molina, 2023;Nyrup et al, 2023;O'Brien et al, 2015;Reyes-Housholder, 2016;Scherpereel et al, 2020;Stockemer & Sundstrom, 2018. Esta relación se encontró consistentemente positiva y estadísticamente significativa en 27 de los 30 trabajos que lo analizaron.…”

“…Studlar & Moncrief, 2002;Tremblay, 2012;Whitford et al, 2007) y también han sido crecientes los estudios que incluyen o comparan sistemas presidenciales y parlamentarios (Annesley et al, 2019;Armstrong et al, 2023;Bego, 2014;Krook & O'Brien, 2012;Nyrup et al, 2023;Reynolds, 1999;Siaroff, 2000;Stockemer, 2017;Stockemer & Sundstrom, 2018;Whitford et al, 2007). Sin embargo, los trabajos que incluyen sólo los regímenes presidenciales de otras regiones del mundo como África (Arriola & Johnson, 2014;Bauer & Darkwah, 2021;Kroeger & Kang, 2022), América Latina (Basabe-Serrano, 2020Canelo, 2020Canelo, , 2021M. C. Escobar-Lemmon & Taylor-Robinson, 2005;Gatto et al, 2022;Sotomayor Valarezo & Huertas-Hernández, 2017Taylor-Robinson & Gleitz, 2018), Asia (Lee & McClean, 2022;Lee & Park, 2018) o los Estados Unidos (Borrelli, 2002(Borrelli, , 2010J.…”

Women's Descriptive Representation in Burundi: The Mixed Effects of Gender Quotas

“…Such regimes may even gain from their gender-friendly policies (Tripp, 2023). Autocracies heavily dependent on international aid routinely utilise gender quotas as a window-dressing strategy to attract international funding despite their democratic governance shortcomings (Kroeger and Kang, 2022).…”

Consolidating Progress: The Selection of Female Ministers in Autocracies and Democracies

“…The advancement of gender balance in politics has not been a solely democratic feature. While democratic institutions sustain the advancement of women through solidifying norms of gender balance for democratic legitimacy (Annesley, Beckwith, and Franceschet 2019), factors such as communist ideology (Harsch 2014) and external pressure from international institutions have led to autocratic regimes extending positions of power to women as well (Donno, Fox, and Kaasik 2021;Fallon, Swiss, and Viterna 2012;Kroeger and Kang 2022). The role of women in autocratic cabinets has been varied: while dictatorships drew the political elite heavily from maledominated organizations such as the military (Gandhi 2008;Geddes, Wright, and Frantz 2018), the rise of electoral or competitive authoritarianism has seen an increase in female political participation while at the same time witnessing an eschewing of fair elections (Bauer 2012;Blankenship and Kubicek 2018;Donno, Fox, and Kaasik 2021;Kroeger and Kang 2022).…”

“…Nonetheless, autocrats can have reasons to pick women to serve in the cabinet. They may want to positively signal to international donors, lenders, and investors by appointing women (Donno, Fox, and Kaasik 2021; Fallon, Swiss, and Viterna 2012; Kroeger and Kang 2022). Furthermore, as we argue later on, autocrats will have incentives to pick female leaders from popular movements to incorporate those groups into their support coalition if the regime evolves toward a more competitive form of authoritarianism.…”