This handbook provides an account of women’s political rights across all major regions of the world, focusing both on women’s right to vote and women’s right to run for political office. Authors map and assess the impact of groundbreaking reforms, providing insight into these dynamics in a wide array of countries where women’s suffrage and representation have taken different paths and led to varying degrees of transformation. On the eve of many countries celebrating a century of women’s suffrage, as well as record numbers of women elected and appointed to political office, this timely volume offers an important introduction to ongoing developments related to women’s political empowerment worldwide.
This book is a theory-building and comparative exercise in concepts commonly used to analyze the broad impacts of gender quotas. The book begins with the argument that the means by which women enter politics may influence how their presence affects political representation. Following a preface by Drude Dahlerup, the editors introduce the book with a framework for analyzing the impact of quotas, based upon descriptive, substantive and symbolic dimensions of representation. The book is organized into three sections, each devoted to analyzing one of the dimensions of representation, and each of these sections contains a chapter case study from one of four regions of the world (Western Europe, Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia).