The effects of female political participation on missing women: Evidence from the Egyptian protests of 2011–2014

This paper examines the effects of political protests during the Egyptian revolution between 2011 and 2014 on “missing women” in Egypt. The term “missing women” refers to the number of women missing in population because of sex-selective abortions, excess female mortality and lower survival rates caused by gender discrimination, infanticide, neglect, malnutrition, domestic violence, unequal healthcare access and provision, and poor treatment. We hypothesize that increased female participation in these protests improved women’s empowerment and helped reduce missing women. Using a difference-in-differences analysis, our identification strategy is based on protest intensity heterogeneity, and changes in missing women for the age group of [0–1] before and after the protests across different governorates in urban and rural areas. We find convincing causal evidence that the number of missing women decreased significantly in high protest intensity governorates. Based on protest heterogeneity across different periods, we also show that this effect was most visible after the fourth and final phase of protests. As for possible channels, we find that domestic violence during pregnancy incidence fell significantly in treatment areas, while both relative vaccination rate of girls aged [0–1] as well as women’s empowerment increased significantly.