The Effects of Electoral Violence on Women’s Legislative Representation

• Published date: 01 September 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10659129241252373
• Author: Reed M. Wood
• Date: 01 September 2024
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Political Research Quarterly

2024, Vol. 77(3) 915–930

© The Author(s) 2024

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DOI: 10.1177/10659129241252373

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The Effects of Electoral Violence on

Women’s Legislative Representation

Reed M. Wood

1



Abstract

Despite the global expansion in women’s access to political leadership in recent decades, female parliamentarians remain

a distinct minority in most national legislatures. Previous studies have linked variations in women’s descriptive rep-

resentation to international and domestic security threats, such as interstate war and transnational terrorist campaigns.

However, existing research has thus far overlooked how the turbulence, unrest, and violence often associated with the

election process itself may produce gendered electoral outcomes. I argue that violent contention in the period im-

mediately preceding elections introduces gendered distortions to the political recruitment process that determines the

gender composition of legislatures. The cumulative effect of these distortions is a reduction in the proportion of

legislative seats subsequently held by women. To evaluate my hypothesis, I analyze data from 620 nominally competitive

legislative elections in 128 countries between 1990 and 2012. Consistent with expectations, the results suggest that

higher levels of election-related violence are associated with lower rates of women’s descriptive representation.

Keywords

descriptive representation, election violence, women and politics, gender and conf‌lict

A rapidly growing literature suggest that changes in

women’s descriptive representation can inf‌luence both

political discourse and political processes and, in so doing,

shape policy outputs. Recent studies have, for instance,

found that increasing the proportion of seats held by

women in the national legislature is associated with

greater political engagement among female voters (Barnes

and Burchard 2013), the adoption of social welfare-

oriented policies (Bolzendahl and Brooks 2007;Lu and

Breuning 2014), the prioritization of social welfare over

defense spending (Koch and Fulton 2011;Shair-

Rosenf‌ield and Wood 2017), and a diminished risk of

armed conf‌lict (Koch and Fulton 2011;Melander 2005).

Thus, for both normative and instrumental reasons, im-

proving women’s participation in politics and increasing

their access to position of political authority has become a

key objective for many international organizations and

represents an increasingly important component of United

Nations strategies for promoting global peace, security,

and stability (UN Women 2015;UNDP 2022).

The average share of seats held by women in national

legislatures has risen from just over 10% in the early

1990s to more than 25% in 2023 (IPU 2023).

1

Thus,

despite achieving signif‌icant gains over the previous three

decades, women remain dramatically under-represented

in law-making bodies around the globe and continue to

face substantial constraints on their collective ability to

inf‌luence policymaking. Societal gender norms, party

structures, and electoral system characteristics feature

prominently in existing explanations for the persistent

gender imbalance observed across national parliaments

(see W¨

angnerud 2009). However, recent scholarship has

begun to consider how changes in domestic and inter-

national security environments inf‌luence public support

for female leadership (e.g., Holman, Merolla, and

Zechmeister 2022) and women’s descriptive representa-

tion (e.g., Kang and Kim 2020;Schroeder 2017). Such

studies contribute to the existing literature by identifying

security threats as signif‌icant obstacles to women’s access

to political authority; yet, by focusing predominantly on

large-scale threats, they have largely overlooked how the

turbulence, unrest, and violence often associated with the

electoral process itself might produce gendered leadership

1

University of Essex, Colchester, UK

Corresponding Author:

Reed M. Wood, Department of Government, University of Essex,

5.424, Colchester Campus, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester CO43SQ, UK.

Email: reed.wood@essex.ac.uk

outcomes. Violent contention and social unrest are

common features of the pre-election landscape in many

countries and have the potential to shape the preferences

and behaviors of candidates, parties, and voters. It is

therefore important to consider whether variation in the

prevalence of election-related violence inf‌luences

women’s political recruitment, electoral success, and

subsequent representation in elected political institutions.

I address this issue by linking patterns of violent po-

litical contention observed in the period immediately

preceding the election with the proportion of seats held

by women in national legislatures following the election.

In developing my argument, I explicitly acknowledge

that the gender composition of a legislature ref‌lects the

outcome of a multi-stage recruitment process that ex-

tends from the supply of candidates who aspire to

candidacy, through the party-controlled selection

mechanisms that determine the f‌ield of candidates, and

f‌inally to the preferences of the electorate who ultimately

selects winners from the pool of candidates competing

for off‌ice (Krook 2010;Norris 1997). This approach

improves upon those adopted in previous studies, which

have focused disproportionality on the last stage of this

process and therefore obfuscated the theoretical mech-

anisms that connect security threats with women’sde-

scriptive representation. Building from this sequential

model of political recruitment, I contend that electoral

violence introduces distortions to each stage of the

process. In brief, high levels of pre-election violence

may disproportionally deter women from pursuing

candidacy, (further) bias party elites against nominating

female candidates, and discourage voters from endorsing

them at the ballot box. The cumulative effect of these

distortions is a reduction in women ’s descriptive rep-

resentation in the national legislature.

I test my hypothesis by analyzing data on 620 nomi-

nally competitive national legislative elections—elections

in which, at minimum, voters could directly select rep-

resentatives from a list of candidates—held in

128 countries between 1990 and 2012. The results provide

robust support for the proposition that more frequent pre-

election violence is associated with a reduction in the

proportion of women-held seats in the subsequent national

legislature. Notably, they also indicate that non-violent

contentious events occurring during the pre-election

period—including protests, detentions, and harassment

of party members or candidates—have little inf‌luence on

women’s representation. This result implies that explicit

acts of violence rather than aggressive and antagonistic

campaign environments or unrest and instability more

broadly suppress women’s descriptive representation.

This study makes several important contributions.

First, it adds to the growing literature demonstrating how

patterns of violence and the perception of threat inf‌luence

women’s access to positions of political authority. It

specif‌ically highlights the gendered implications of the

often-tumultuous nature of elections, and it demonstrates

that in addition to traditional, high-prof‌ile security threats,

more quotidian forms of political and social violence can

also inf‌luence women’s representation. Furthermore, by

highlighting how violence potentially impacts the discrete

but inter-related stages of political recruitment, it offers a

more nuanced theoretical framework for examining the

relationship between various forms of security threats and

descriptive representation. Finally, the empirical results

imply that efforts to expand women’s representation

should be linked to broader efforts to reduce violence,

intimidation, and harassment during political campaigns

and on the day of the election. The international com-

munity has demonstrated a keen interest in both in recent

years; yet, these issues are often decoupled and treated as

distinct and separate goals. These f‌indings suggest that

efforts to reduce violence during the campaign period may

positively inf‌luence the women’s descriptive representa-

tion in national legislatures.

Security and Gendered Leadership

A complex, bidirectional relationship exists between

conf‌lict and violence on the one hand and sex and gender

on the other. The prevalence of traditional gender norms

and patriarchal social structures—and the associated ex-

clusion of women from political authority—among so-

cieties characterized by high levels of militarization and

violence and the frequently observed retreat of women

from the public sphere during war strongly implies that

violence and gender roles/beliefs are mutually constitutive

(e.g., Sjoberg 2013). While empirical studies have not

fully untangled this reciprocal relationship, their results

nonetheless suggest that political leader sex and the

gender composition of national political institutions in-

f‌luence a state’s propensity for violence and armed

conf‌lict (Koch and Fulton 2011;Shair-Rosenf‌ield and

Wood 2017). Principally, countries whose citizens hold

more egalitarian gender attitudes—which in turn facilitate

women’s access to political leadership—are less likely to

instigate armed conf‌licts (Caprioli 2000) and less likely to

experience large-scale internal violence (Melander 2005).

Conversely, they f‌ind that armed conf‌lict and threats of

war represent powerful impediments to women’s ability to

gain access to positions of political authority. For ex-

ample, the proportion of seats held by women in the

national legislature is lower among states that experience

heightened external threat environments, such as during

periods of international conf‌lict, persistent interstate ri-

valry, and ongoing territorial dispute (Kang and Kim

2020;Schroeder 2017). Consistent with the assertions

of feminist scholars, Kang and Kim (2020) further

916 Political Research Quarterly 77(3)