Abstract
We evaluate global patterns of women’s access to the most powerful and prestigious cabinet posts: defense, finance, and foreign affairs. Although women remain dramatically underrepresented in these important portfolios, their access has increased notably in recent decades and varies dramatically across the globe. We theorize that women’s access to these posts may empower women citizens by fostering satisfaction and confidence with the government and cultivating beliefs in women’s ability to govern. Using our novel data, combined with the World Values Survey data from 58 countries from 1981 to 2014, we find that women’s presence in top cabinet posts is positively associated with women’s and men’s satisfaction with and confidence in government. Nonetheless, it is not associated with more positive evaluations of women’s ability to lead.
Women in public office stand as symbols for other women, both enhancing their identification with the system and their ability to have influence within it. (Burrell 1996, 151)
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- 1.
Inner circle cabinet posts is a term used in US politics to refer to the Defense, Finance, State, and Attorney General posts (Fenno 1959; Cronin 1975; Weisberg 1987; Wyszomirski 1989). Dogan (1989) also uses the term in regard to concentric circles of degrees of importance of cabinet posts in European governments.
- 2.
The defense portfolio, for example, is more important in some countries than in others (Barnes and O’Brien 2017; Escobar-Lemmon and Taylor-Robinson 2016). Thus, including a general measure of top cabinet posts that we apply to all countries, rather than a country-specific definition, biases our results toward the null—making it more difficult to find support for our hypotheses.
- 3.
The health portfolio was held by 56 women, the same number of women has held the culture portfolio. More women held the labor portfolio (60) and the trade/industry portfolio (64) (“Women in Politics: 2014, situation as of January 2014, Inter-Parliamentary Union, 2014).
- 4.
Female appointments to these posts are based on data in the Guide 2 Women Leaders database (http://www.guide2womenleaders.com/women accessed January 30, 2016). We do not include temporary appointments. These data go back to 1929.
- 5.
As another signal of the post’s importance, in the USA the Secretary of State is in line to fill the presidency.
- 6.
It is important to clarify that the importance of the defense post is contested in comparative politics research. Scholars who study politics in Scandinavian countries, with their emphasis on social welfare politics, explain that the defense post is not a prime way to advance a politician’s career, while social welfare posts are good for career advancement (Skjeie 1991). In European parliamentary systems, surveys of elites have been used to determine the prestige of various cabinet posts (see Druckman and Warwick 2005; Druckman and Roberts 2008).
- 7.
An extensive literature explores traits associated with masculine and feminine, as well as traits associated with leadership. See, for example, Alexander and Andersen 1993; Huddy and Terkildsen 1993a, b; Fridkin Kahn 1994; Heilman 2001; Sanbonmatsu 2002; Lawless 2004b; Banwart 2010; Dolan 2010; Schneider and Bos 2014; Dittmar 2015.
- 8.
See also Beaman et al. (2009) for positive but transitory impact of women in government on the attitudes of men. They study the impact of women holding the equivalent of mayor posts in India.
- 9.
In a study of 17 Latin American countries, Zetterberg (2009) concluded that adoption of a quota is not sufficient to increase political participation by women. Barnes and Burchard (2013, 783) also find in African countries that women’s political participation is not increased simply with the adoption of a gender quota. That finding underscores the importance of the question of whether election of women via quotas helps to change societal attitudes about the capacity of women to govern. Further, Clayton (2015) shows that the adoption of quotas in Lesotho is associated with lower levels of women’s political engagement in local politics.
- 10.
Annesley and Gains (2010) present an important argument about whether feminist ministers appointed in Britain have had access to the power and resources necessary to effect real policy change.
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AppendixDependent Variables—Operationalization and Descriptive Statistics
AppendixDependent Variables—Operationalization and Descriptive Statistics
Here we discuss the operationalization and variable descriptions for the dependent variables in our analyses. The first, satisfied, asks how satisfied respondents are with the people in national office. This variable ranges from 1 (very dissatisfied) to 4 (very satisfied) with a mean of 2.2. The second dependent variable, confidence, asks how much confidence respondents have in the government. Confidence ranges from 1 (none at all) to 4 (a great deal) with a mean of 2.3. Finally, the third dependent variable, men lead, asks respondents how strongly they agree with the statement that men make better political leaders than women. Men Lead ranges from 1 (strongly agree) to 4 (strongly disagree) with a mean of 2.7. Given that each of these dependent variables is measured on an ordinal scale (i.e., a 4-point scale), we estimate an ordered logistic regression for each of the dependent variables.
Findings: Predicted Probabilities and Discussion
Whereas our model predicts that 5% of respondents report being “very satisfied” with government when there is a female in a top cabinet post (and 41% are “satisfied”), only 3% of respondents report being “very satisfied” when these posts are all occupied by men (and 33% are “satisfied—an 8% point difference in cabinets with and without women in top posts). By contrast 14% report being “very unsatisfied” when a woman occupies one of the top posts compared to 21% when the posts all remain in the hands of men. In sum, the appointment of a woman to the defense, foreign affairs, or finance post is associated with a 2% increase in the probability of respondents saying they are “very satisfied” with the government and a 7% decrease in the probability of respondents saying they are “very unsatisfied” with the government. This relationship is not statistically different for men and women. Taken together results from Model 1 show strong support for Hypothesis 1a but not for Hypothesis 1b.
With respect to Hypotheses 2a and 2b, the results reported in Model 2 show that women’s access to powerful cabinet posts is also positively correlated with respondent’s confidence in the government. Whereas our model predicts that 14% of respondents report having “a great deal” of confidence in the government when there is a female in a top cabinet post, only 10% of respondents report having “a great deal” of confidence when these posts are all occupied by men. By contrast, 12% of respondents report having no confidence at all in the government when there is a woman in a top position compared to 18% when women are excluded from the top cabinet positions. Specifically, female ministers in top posts are associated with a 4% increase in the probability of respondents saying they have “a great deal” of confidence in their government and a 6% decrease in respondents saying that they have no confidence at all in the government. As before, we see that this relationship is not significantly different for male and female respondents, and thus Hypothesis 2b is not supported. Instead, both men and women exhibit higher levels of confidence in the government when women have recently held top positions in the cabinet—lending support for Hypothesis 2a.
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Barnes, T.D., Taylor-Robinson, M.M. (2018). Women Cabinet Ministers in Highly Visible Posts and Empowerment of Women: Are the Two Related?. In: Alexander, A., Bolzendahl, C., Jalalzai, F. (eds) Measuring Women’s Political Empowerment across the Globe. Gender and Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64006-8_11
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