The variation in women's political representation in national parliaments across the MENA region from 2000 to 2017

Abstract

This thesis seeks to determine what accounts for the variation in women’s representation in national parliaments across the Middle East North African region (MENA region) between 2000 and 2017. The thesis scrutinizes the political, socioeconomic and cultural factors that may have an impact on the proportion of parliamentary seats held by women in the region. This is conducted, first, by (1) examining the literature about women’s representation in politics; (2) identifying possible factors that may play a role in the variation in women’s representation across the MENA region; and finally (3) assessing the impact of these factors on women’s representation through multivariate regression analysis. This is largely because gender inequality in political representation across the MENA region has received very little attention. This study underlines that the ideal conditions for a high women’s political representation across the MENA region are a proportional representation (PR) electoral system, higher level of democracy, earlier suffrage, higher level of women’s labor force participation and less dependence on religion as a source of laws and attitudes.