IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/gunwpe/0530.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Gender Gap in African Political Participation: Individual and contextual determinants

Author

Listed:
  • Isaksson, Ann-Sofie

    (Department of Economics, School of Business, Economics and Law, Göteborg University)

  • Kotsadam, Andreas
  • Nerman, Måns

    (Department of Economics, School of Business, Economics and Law, Göteborg University)

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyze the factors underlying the gender gap in African electoral and inter-electoral political participation. Drawing on new data covering over 27,000 respondents from 246 regions in 20 emerging African democracies, the empirical findings suggest that while there is a gender gap in both voting and inter-electoral participation, the latter is larger. Whereas several of the investigated individual and contextual characteristics are found to be important determinants of participation, they explain only a very modest share of the observed gender gaps. We do find, however, that gender gaps in education are negatively correlated with female inter-electoral participation and that gender gaps in employment are negatively related to female voting. Interestingly, and contrary to suggestions in previous research, there is no evidence that religiosity at the individual or community level increases the gender differences in political activity.

Suggested Citation

  • Isaksson, Ann-Sofie & Kotsadam, Andreas & Nerman, Måns, 2012. "The Gender Gap in African Political Participation: Individual and contextual determinants," Working Papers in Economics 530, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:gunwpe:0530
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/2077/28905
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Leonard Wantchekon, 2003. "Clientelism and voting behavior: Evidence from a field experiment in benin," Natural Field Experiments 00339, The Field Experiments Website.
    2. World Bank, 2011. "World Development Report 2011 [Rapport sur le développement dans le monde 2011 : Conflits, sécurité et développement - Abrégé]," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 4389, April.
    3. Hirschmann, David, 1991. "Women and political participation in Africa: Broadening the scope of research," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 19(12), pages 1679-1694, December.
    4. Knack, Stephen & Kropf, Martha, 1998. "For shame! The effect of community cooperative context on the probability of voting," MPRA Paper 27258, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Jackman, Robert W., 1987. "Political Institutions and Voter Turnout in the Industrial Democracies," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 81(2), pages 405-423, June.
    6. Pedro C. Vicente, 2007. "Is Vote Buying Effective? Evidence from a Randomized Experiment in West Africa," Economics Series Working Papers 318, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    7. Brady, Henry E. & Verba, Sidney & Schlozman, Kay Lehman, 1995. "Beyond SES: A Resource Model of Political Participation," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 89(2), pages 271-294, June.
    8. World Bank, 2012. "World Development Report 2012 [Rapport sur le développement dans le monde 2012]," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 4391, April.
    9. Isaksson, Ann-Sofie, 2010. "Political participation in Africa: Participatory inequalities and the role of resources," Working Papers in Economics 462, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics, revised 01 Oct 2010.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Isaksson, Ann-Sofie, 2010. "Political participation in Africa: Participatory inequalities and the role of resources," Working Papers in Economics 462, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics, revised 01 Oct 2010.
    2. Helen M. Haugh & Alka Talwar, 2016. "Linking Social Entrepreneurship and Social Change: The Mediating Role of Empowerment," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 133(4), pages 643-658, February.
    3. Felix Meier Zu Selhausen & Jacob Weisdorf, 2016. "A colonial legacy of African gender inequality? Evidence from Christian Kampala, 1895–2011," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 69(1), pages 229-257, February.
    4. Stephanie Barrientos & Adwoa Owusuaa Bobie, 2016. "Promoting Gender equality in the cocoa-chocolate value chain: opportunities and challenges in Ghana," Global Development Institute Working Paper Series 062016, GDI, The University of Manchester.
    5. Kilic, Talip & Palacios-López, Amparo & Goldstein, Markus, 2015. "Caught in a Productivity Trap: A Distributional Perspective on Gender Differences in Malawian Agriculture," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 416-463.
    6. Alkire, Sabina & Meinzen-Dick, Ruth & Peterman, Amber & Quisumbing, Agnes & Seymour, Greg & Vaz, Ana, 2013. "The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 71-91.
    7. Isis Gaddis & Stephan Klasen, 2014. "Economic development, structural change, and women’s labor force participation:," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 27(3), pages 639-681, July.
    8. Mai, Nhat Chi, 2022. "Capital Raising and Management of Vietnamese Small and Medium Sized Enterprises after Integrating into Global Economy," OSF Preprints dv68m, Center for Open Science.
    9. Thilsted, Shakuntala Haraksingh & Thorne-Lyman, Andrew & Webb, Patrick & Bogard, Jessica Rose & Subasinghe, Rohana & Phillips, Michael John & Allison, Edward Hugh, 2016. "Sustaining healthy diets: The role of capture fisheries and aquaculture for improving nutrition in the post-2015 era," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 126-131.
    10. Asiedu, Elizabeth & Azomahou, Théophile T. & Getachew, Yoseph & Yitbarek, Eleni, 2021. "Share the love: Parental bias, women empowerment and intergenerational mobility," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 191(C), pages 846-867.
    11. Karthik Muralidharan & Nishith Prakash, 2017. "Cycling to School: Increasing Secondary School Enrollment for Girls in India," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 9(3), pages 321-350, July.
    12. Ghani,Syed Ejaz & Grover,Arti & Kerr,Sari & Kerr,William Robert, 2016. "Will market competition trump gender discrimination in India ?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 7814, The World Bank.
    13. Michael Chasukwa & Dan Banik, 2019. "Institutional bypass and aid effectiveness in Africa," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2019-22, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    14. Elisabetta Lodigiani & Sara Salomone, 2015. "Migration-induced Transfers of Norms. Political Empowerment?The case of Female Political Empowerment," Working Papers 2015:19, Department of Economics, University of Venice "Ca' Foscari".
    15. Alberto Bagnai & Arsène Rieber & Thi Anh-Dao Tran, 2015. "Economic growth and balance-of-payments constraint in Vietnam," Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 38(4), pages 588-615, November.
    16. Chant, Sylvia, 2016. "Galvanising girls for development? Critiquing the shift from ‘smart’ to ‘smarter economics’," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 66231, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    17. Emma Galli & Danilo V. Mascia & Stefania P. S. Rossi, 2020. "Bank credit constraints for women‐led SMEs: Self‐restraint or lender bias?," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 26(4), pages 1147-1188, September.
    18. Crost, Benjamin & Felter, Joseph H. & Johnston, Patrick B., 2016. "Conditional cash transfers, civil conflict and insurgent influence: Experimental evidence from the Philippines," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 171-182.
    19. Le, Manh-Duc & Pieri, Fabio & Zaninotto, Enrico, 2019. "From central planning towards a market economy: The role of ownership and competition in Vietnamese firms’ productivity," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(3), pages 693-716.
    20. Baliamoune–Lutz, Mina & McGillivray, Mark, 2015. "The impact of gender inequality in education on income in Africa and the Middle East," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 1-11.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    political participation; gender gap; Africa; afrobarometer;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D01 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Microeconomic Behavior: Underlying Principles
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • O12 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
    • O55 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Africa

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hhs:gunwpe:0530. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Jessica Oscarsson (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/naiguse.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.