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Is Women’s Political Representation Beneficial to Women’s Interests in Autocracies? Theory and Evidence from Post-Soviet Russia

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Gender and Corruption

Part of the book series: Political Corruption and Governance ((PCG))

Abstract

Previous research has revealed a connection between increased women’s political representation (WPR) and responsiveness to women’s interests in democracies; however, our knowledge about this in non-democracies is practically non-existent. Building on the authoritarian regimes and on gender and informal institutions literatures, we theorize WPR effects in the context of autocratic regimes, explaining why the positive dynamics between WPR and women-friendly policy outcomes and outputs may be disrupted there. Employing an original dataset from 80 subnational political units in a large electoral autocracy (Russia), we find that larger numbers of women in regional legislatures are associated with higher rates of infant mortality, while the level of democracy moderates the relationship. The analysis reveals no association between higher numbers of women in senior bureaucratic posts and child mortality.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This project has received funding from the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (agrent agreement SG014–1147:1).

  2. 2.

    In comparison, in the United States, a country with twice the population of Russia, this figure stands at about 1000 a year (Nechepurenko 2017).

  3. 3.

    While Russia’s regional bureaucracies employ a non-trivial number of women in bureaucratic posts that wield policymaking powers (in 2008–2016 about 70 percent of such posts in regional governments were occupied by women (FSSS 2017)), they used to be “concentrated at the bottom of the administrative ladder” and men tended to occupy the most senior posts (Brym and Gimpelson 2004, p. 102). A purposeful drive to recruit women to politics that has been seen in Putin’s Russia since about the mid-2000s has also touched upon senior bureaucratic positions. Our original data on the number of women in senior bureaucratic positions across Russia’s regions in 2014 shows that on average about a quarter of the most senior bureaucratic posts were occupied by women. This ranges from no women at all to almost 55 percent of such posts.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Political Science, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Marina Nistotskaya & Helena Stensöta

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  1. Marina Nistotskaya
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  2. Helena Stensöta
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Helena Stensöta

  2. University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Lena Wängnerud

Appendix

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Table 8.2 Description and sources of variables
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Nistotskaya, M., Stensöta, H. (2018). Is Women’s Political Representation Beneficial to Women’s Interests in Autocracies? Theory and Evidence from Post-Soviet Russia. In: Stensöta, H., Wängnerud, L. (eds) Gender and Corruption. Political Corruption and Governance. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70929-1_8

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