RAPID: Political Party Organization and the Role of Women

在许多新的民主国家，妇女在政党中的代表性不足，部分原因是社会规范阻碍妇女在当地政治中变得活跃。缩小基层参与的性别差距有什么效果？该项目通过开展两项大规模调查来解决这一问题，以评估旨在鼓励加纳妇女参政的社区公民教育方案的短期和长期效果。公民教育待遇的形式是由加纳国家公民教育委员会举行一系列大型社区会议，这是一个独立、无党派的政府机构，定期开展类似活动，处理反对妇女参与政党的社会规范，并鼓励更多妇女参与。评估公民教育和参与程度之间的联系对未来的发展政策有影响，包括由美国政府资助和进行的努力。这项研究探索(A)妇女的政治赋权是否增加了妇女获得政府资源的机会，并降低了她们的经济脆弱性，以及(B)妇女的政治赋权是否改变了关于妇女在社会中适当角色的态度和规范。它从两个方面扩展了关于这些问题的新兴工作。首先，大多数关于发展中国家性别问题的研究都集中在女性担任领导职务的影响上。本研究将重点转移到基层参与的效果研究上。其次，内生性通常会使对女性参与效果的因果推断复杂化。这项研究将是为数不多的随机鼓励或利用女性参与的“自然”实验的研究之一。此外，实地试验对新民主国家政党可用的资源如何影响其选举战略，包括裙带主义和恐吓选民的理论进行了一次不同寻常的明确测试。通过采用鼓励设计的实地试验，可以估计妇女更多参与政治活动对以下方面的影响：(A)政党战略，包括在选举前动员和宣传妇女；(B)妇女随后的经济福利；(C)关于妇女参与政治和地方领导的社会规范。

Women are under-represented in political parties in many new democracies, in part because of social norms that inhibit women from becoming active in local politics. What are the effects of reducing the gender gap in grassroots participation? This project addresses this question by conducting two large-scale surveys to evaluate the short- and long-run effects of a community civic education program designed to encourage women's political participation in Ghana. The civic education treatment takes the form of a series of large community meetings held by Ghana's National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE), an independent, non-partisan government agency that regularly engages in similar activities, and addresses social norms against the participation of women in political parties and encourages greater women's participation. Assessing the link between civic education and levels of participation has implications for future development policy, including efforts funded and conducted by the US government.This research explores (a) whether women's political empowerment increases women's access to government resources and reduces their economic vulnerability, and (b) whether women's political empowerment changes attitudes and norms about women's appropriate roles in society. It extends an emerging body of work on these questions in two ways. First, most research on gender in the developing world has focused on the impacts of women in leadership positions. This study shifts focus to the study of the effects of grassroots participation. Second, endogeneity generally complicates causal inferences on the effects of women's participation. This research will be one of a handful of studies that have randomly encouraged or exploited "natural" experiments on women's participation. Moreover, the field experiment presents an unusually well-identified test of theories of how the resources available to political parties in new democracies affect their electoral strategies, including clientelism and intimidation of voters. The field experiment with an encouragement design allows the estimation of the effects of increased women's political participation on (a)political party strategies, including mobilization and outreach to women before the election; (b) the subsequent economic welfare of women; and (c) social norms about the participation of women in politics and local leadership.