Acceso usuarios
Aside from the commonsensical conclusion that institutions (e.g. quota rules) boost womens parliamentary representation, there is little consensus in the academic literature on the relative and absolute impact other economic, cultural or societal factors have on the number of women in parliament. One variable that is particularly debated in the literature is womens labour force participation. The indicators reported impact ranges from substantively positive to nil to even slightly negative. In this article we aim to resolve these controversies. Our pooled time series analysis—based on the largest possible data set, namely all countries for which the data are available from 1995 to 2010—indicates that the number of women in the workforce strongly influences womens parliamentary representation.
