Political scientists have long argued that gender matters when it comes to politics. Increasingly, scholars are using large-N, quantitative analysis to demonstrate that outcomes for women are related to political phenomena such as war, conflict, repression, and democracy, among others. While such studies have been enormously beneficial, we argue that using “gender equality” as an umbrella term leads to imprecise theories and concept stretching. Instead, we suggest the use of three different concepts that have strong field and theoretical utility and that are easier to measure cross-nationally: women’s inclusion, women’s rights, and women’s security. We show that these concepts are distinct from gender equality and provide a way to measure them using Bayesian latent variable models. We then use these concepts to demonstrate how careful conceptualization and measurement can alter and improve existing theories, using the example of the “feminist peace theory”—the idea that “gender equality” facilitates peaceful societies.
Karim, S., & Hill, D. (2018, May). The study of gender and women in cross-national political science research: Rethinking concepts and measurement. In Annual Convention of the International Studies Association.
