Women's human rights: A global, comparative analysis

This dissertation is a global, comparative study of the determinants of government respect for women's economic, social, and political rights in 160 countries from 1981 to 2003. Using a new data set on women's rights that represents an important advance over previous studies, analyses were conducted to more conclusively answer the question of why national governments across the globe vary so much in their treatment of women with some governments fully respecting women's rights and others doing little to advance their rights. Though national governments, to a large extent, control the major instruments of gender policy, in recent years, supra-national trends and processes have come to increasingly exert a more substantial influence on national human rights practices. Therefore, the theoretical framework incorporates both national and supranational factors identified in the human rights literature as having a significant bearing on the gender policies of nation-states including (1) rising levels of democracy in many nations, (2) separation of state and religion (i.e. level of political secularism), (3) the internationalization of human rights norms, and (4) economic globalization.; The dissertation is developed in two stages and its findings are presented sequentially within each stage. During the first stage, the interrelationships between the above mentioned trends and women's rights attainment is explored on a global sample of countries, while controlling for alternative explanations identified in the empirical literature as important determinants of human rights practices. During the second stage, the relationship between women's rights and one of these trends---democracy---is more closely examined. Specifically, I examine the institutional differences among democracies in light of two broad frameworks that have guided empirical and theoretical research in the institutional literature: majoritarian and consensual forms of democracy, while controlling for other important institutional attributes within democracies. A focus on democracies is important since there is likely to be a substantial difference in government practices towards women between democracies and non-democracies. An examination of democracies should also help answer the question of whether democracy on its own is enough to guarantee women their rights or whether both democracy and a politically secular state are necessary prerequisites for the full enjoyment of women's rights.