Women sitting in Parliaments.

A regression analyses study.

Martn Belln Mndez Sdertrns Hgskola April 2013.

Short motivation for the study.

Every year that pass, societies all around the world walk toward achieving more rights and equality between all their citizens. But not all the societies walk at the same beat, because they are not at the same points of the road. Even in nowadays societies, it can be thought that women rights are almost achieved, at least in a minimun level; and this does not mean that equality between men and women is achieved. Women are half of the society; even more than half of the society because they have longer lifes, but, that means that they have half of the power? Of course that not; they are not even well represented, neither in the countries with best equality situations and with very goods democratics sistems; and as it is going to be showed in the following research, there are countries where even nowadays they can not vote.

Women have been discriminated during all the history, and this does not changed in the lasts centuries. Organizations as United Nations have special agencies just for women rights and issues. Although the work of these organizations, and the previous work of all the feminists in the past exist, this difference is still obvious and this is the essay topic; try to measure the factors that explain this difference. As it would be impossible to measure this in all the contexts, it has been chosen the political dimension.

As previous assumptions, it was chosen as dependent variable the number of seats occupied in parliaments by women. It was thought by the researcher that the most influential factor that will affect to this variable will be an index that measured gender inequality. As it is logical, countries with higher inequality will have less women in their parliaments. After that, the participation of women in labour market will be also an important variable that can explains why in some countries there are more women in their parliaments than in others, in the ones with higher women participation it will be more women in their parliaments because women will be more integrated in the public dimension. Also, the number of children per women will affect this; the assumption of the reasearcher is that, higher number of children will mean less women in parliaments. It is commun known that higher fertility rates are in non-developed countries, where equalitarian situation are not really good. In adittion, it is known that in some islamic countries, women continue having less legal rights than men because they still following religious law; so it would be interesting measure how this difference affects to the number of women in parliaments. Another topics that would affect are the legislation, the education and the difference between for how long the country has a peaceful democratic situation or women suffrage.

As interesting data before the analisis, it can be seen that there are two countries without any women in their parliaments, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. After this two, Iran is the country with less percentage of women in its parliament, just a 2,80%. As countries with more percentage of women in their parliaments, Sweden is the one which most women have, a 45% of its parliament is occupied by women, and after Sweden with a 42,90% is Iceland.

Data and variables.

The data set that its being using in this assignment is a created data set, using the data from differents data bases like, Human development data, World Bank Data Set, differents studies of United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women and some personal research. Its formed by 22 variables, 9 of them are measured as nominal variables and the other 13 as scale variables. It shows data for 95 countries, all around the world. The countries that are in the data set are choosen because of beeing the countries that have less variables without data; 18 from Africa, 19 from America, 24 from Asia, 29 from Europe and 5 from Oceania.

The variables exsting in the data set are:

As dependent variable WomenParliaments, that represents the number of seats in the parliaments of the countries that are occupied by women, expresed in percentage. The mean is 20,53 and the standard deviation is 10,43.

As independent variables:

GenderInequalityIndex, that its an index for measurement of gender disparity. It is measured with values between 0,00 and 1,00 and higher values means that exists a bigger inequality between men and women in that country. The mean is 0,34 and the standard deviation is 0,18.

LabourForce, that describes the percentage of women that are part of the labour force of the country. The mean is 51,67 and the standard deviation is 12,76.

Fertility, that explains the total fertility rate of each country. This shows the average number of children that would be born to a woman over her lifetime. The mean is 2,44 and the standard deviation is 1,20.

IslamicState and NonIslamicState, this two variables are two nominal variables that show which countries are islamic and which not. Each variable has two values, 1 and 0; in the IslamicState 1 means that the country is islamic and 0 that it is not. In NonIslamicState 1 means that the country is not islamic and 0 that it is. The mean is 0,25 for IslamicState and 0,75 for NonIslamicState and the standard deviation is 0,437 for both of them.

DemocracyYear, this variable shows the year since the country lives in a normal democratic situation, with out coup d'etat and other differents possibles drawbacks that have made impossible to the government continue with its task. (Syria is right now in a civil war but the data that its in the essay is from 2010 so in this variable appears the previous situation of peace in the country). The mean is 1961,96 and the standard deviation is 48,85.

WomenVoteYear, this variable shows the year when was achieved the right of voting for women in each country. The mean is 1945,58 and the standard deviation is 23,67.

ExpectedYearsofSchooling, that shows the expected years of education that a woman will have in each country. The mean is 13,31 and the standard deviation is 2,87.

PopulationUrban, that explains in a percetage the number of population that lives in urban areas in the country. The mean is 63,46 and the standard deviation is 21,05.

YesLegNonDiscr and NoLegNonDisc explains if there are, or not, legislation about nondiscrimination in hiring practices on the basis of gender. Each variable has two values, 1 and 0; in the YesLegNonDiscr 1 means that the country has legislation and 0 that it has not. In NoLegNonDisc 1 means that the country has not legislation and 0 that it has. The mean is 0,72 for YesLegNonDiscr and 0,33 NoLegNonDisc and the standard deviation is 0,453 for YesLegNonDiscr and 0,471 for NoLegNonDisc.

YesLegNonSexHar and NoLegNonSexHars, like the two previous variables, these ones explains if there are, or not, laws protecting employees from sexual harassment in the workplace. Each variable has two values, 1 and 0; in the YesLegNonSexHar 1 means that the country has legislation and 0 that it has not. In NoLegNonSexHars 1 means that the country has not legislation and 0 that it has. The mean is 0,57 for YesLegNonSexHar and 0,44 for NoLegNonSexHars and the standard deviation is 0,499 for both of them.

GiniIndex, the Gini coefficient measures the inequality among the income, between men and women. Its measured by a scale between 0 and 100, where 0 it is the perfect equality and 100 the maximun inequality. The mean is 38,81 and the standard deviation is 8,8.

Refugee, shows the number of refugees that are living in each country. The mean is 111974,29 and the standard deviation is 366230,16.

WomenFirstSector, explains the percentage of women that work in the first sector of each country. The mean is 20,39 and the standard deviation is 25,75.

WomenSecondSector, explains the percentage of women that work in the second sector of each country. The mean is 12,15 and the standard deviation is 6,49.

WomenThirdSector, explains the percentage of women that work in the third sector of each country. The mean is 63,98 and the standard deviation is 25,79.

MajorityFirstSector, MajoritySecondSector and MajorityThirdSector, are three nominal variables that explains in which of the three sectors of work activity there are more women working. To describe that, in each variable the value 1 means that the majority of women work in this sector; so the countries that have majority women working in the first sector will have a value 1 in the variable MajorityFirstSector; the ones that have the majority in the second sector will have it in the variable MajoritySecondSector and the ones that have it in the third sector will have it in MajorityThirdSector. The mean is 0,18 for MajorityFirstSector 0,2 for MajoritySecondSector and 0,8 for MajorityThirdSector and the standard deviation is 0,385 for MajorityFirstSector 0,144 for MajoritySecondSector and 0,402 for MajorityThirdSector.

Bivariate relationship.

During the study about the bivariate relationship between the independents variables and the dependent variable we find that there are three categories. The first one, the variables which its correlation is significant at the 0,01 confiance level (GenderInequalityIndex, LabourForce, IslamicState, NonIslamicState, DemocracyYear, WomenVoteYear, YesLegNonSexHar, NoLegNonSexHars); other which its correlation is significant at the 0,05 confiance level (ExpectedYearsofSchooling) and others has no significant correlation at any of this two confiance level.

Multiple regression model.

Coeficientesa Modelo Coeficientes no estandarizados Coeficientes tipificados B 1 (Constante) Gender Inequality Index (value) 2011 Labour force participation rate (%) Female 2009 Total fertility rate 2011a Majority Islamic Year since when there are a democratic system in the country a. Variable dependiente: Seats in national parliament (% Female) 2011 -,042 ,018 -,199 -2,355 ,021 ,919 1,088 2,534 -5,180 1,144 2,340 ,293 2,216 ,029 ,029 ,374 ,682 2,671 1,465 ,228 ,081 ,279 2,805 ,006 ,661 1,512 -23,527 7,174 -,423 -3,279 ,001 ,393 2,544 95,390 Error tp. 35,016 Beta 2,724 ,008 Tolerancia FIV t Sig. Estadsticos de colinealidad

-,217 -2,214

Including the variables in the same order as they were explained before, lending out the variables NonIslamicState, NoLegNonDisc, NoLegNonSexHars and MajotityFirstSector, to create a difference which the other nominal variables that are included in the model. It can be seen that until the variable WomenVoteYear get in the model, the adjusted R squared grows, all the variables are significant and they are also significant in the model, but when WomenVoteYear get in the model this became non significant at a 95% confidence level.

After this model, everytime that one new variable is introduced in the model, the adjusted R square is being reduced. So, the final model that will be study will contains just 5 variables, GenderInequalityIndex, LabourForce, Fertility, IslamicState and DemocracyYear.

In this model, adjusted R square is 0,384. This mean that the five independents variables that are in the model explains the 38,4% of the variation produced in the dependent variable. All the variables are significant at a 95% confiance level with the following values, GenderInequalityIndex 0,001; LabourForce 0,006; Fertility 0,029; IslamicState 0,029; and DemocracyYear 0,021.

Because of being all of them under 0,05 it can be indicated that them are significant at this confiance level.

B values show the effect produced by each independent variable in the dependent one. For GenderInequalityIndex, the value of B is -23,52; this explains that every point more in this variable will affect to the number of seats occupied by women in the parliament of the country. As the Gender Inequality Index is measured between 0,00 and 1,00; every 0,01 more in this index would mean -0,23% less of women in the parliament. In the case of LabourForce, B's value is 0,228. The labour force of participation is a percentage that explains the number of women that work in a country of every 100 persons. That means that 1% more of women labour force will increase 0,228% of women in the parliament of that country. Fertility explains the average number of children that would be born to a woman over her lifetime. Its B value is 2,53; that means that every point more in this value will increase the number of seats occupied by women in the parliament in 2,53%. IslamicState, as a dicotomic variable, shows the difference if the country is Islamic or not. Its B value is -5,18; that means that Islamics countries has 5,18% less of women in their parliaments than the non Islamics states. DemocracyYearhas as B value -0,042; that means that by every year later than the country achieved a democratic situation, it will be -0,042% women in parliaments.

Beta coefficients explain how much affect each independent variable to the dependent one. As it is a typified coefficient, it can be compared between the variables, and it shows which are the ones that affects more to the dependent variable. The one that has more influence in the variation of the dependent variable is GenderInequalityIndex, its beta coefficient is -0,423. After this one, Fertility has a beta coefficient value of 0,293. The third one with more influence, is LabourForce, its beta value is 0,279. The variables IslamicState with a beta value of -0,217; and DemocracyYear with -0,199 are the two variables that has less influence.

For analize multicollinearity in the final model, it should be used the collinearity statistics VIF or Tolerance; in this case its going to be analized tolerance. If tolerance is higher than 0,5, this means that exists collinearity. In the final model that its being studied, just the variables GenderInqualityIndex and Fertility have values under 0,5 (0,393 and 0,374 respectively). So there are a problem of multicollinearity with the others variables. As the solutions for this collinearity problems are, first, collect more data, and for all the variables that are in the data set, these are the countries that has values for all of them, its impossible to collect more data for this

variables. The second solution is either remove one variable or combine some of them. This will make that the final model will have less than five variables; so it will not fit with the propousals of the assigment.

The residual plot showed after, explains the dispersion of the values of the data

As it can be seen in the graphic, there are some values that are residual values because they are out of the normal distribution. The distribution, at it can be seen, is weak and positive and we can detect the residuals in that values that are really in the left and really in the back.

Regression assumptions are fulfilled but not at all. All the variables are properlly measured, there are linear relationship between variables, the expected value of error is 0. In the fact about homoscedasticity, there are not perfect homoscedasticity and as it is said before there are correlation between some variables and the dependent variable. So as conclusion we can think that the regression assumptions are not totally fulfilled.

Even that it is knew that the model is not perfect in all its dimensions; the model explains in some

way how differents reallities affect to the number of women seatting in the parliaments. As it was explained before, first asumptions made by the researchar were fulfilled less two; the variable that talks about fertility and the one that talks about the year when a peacefull democratic situation is achieved by the country, makes the percentage of women in parliaments be reduced in the investigation. The other variables generates the effect expected. Making a generalization, countries where the inequality between men and women is bigger make this reflect in its political system; and countries with higher levels of women participation in the labour market makes higher participation also in the political dimension. Also, that countries that are islamic has a lower percentage of women participating in the political issue.

It seems clear that for getting more equality in the political dimension between women and men, all the factors of discrimination must be decreased to the lowest possible. Helping women to get inside the labour market will also have a good result as an action for getting higher percentage of women representation in the political dimension. Also, it is demostrated that countries that achieve keep a peacefuly democratic situation will have higher representation of women.

Some factors can not be changed, as if a country decides to be islamic and follow its religious rules.

The biggest limitation that it can be found in the research is that it can not be measured, neither investigated how societies are, how the story acted, the work of the previous governments, the necesity of women in all the dimensions of the society because of differents reasons; and this makes the investigation just a little assumption about how some differents realities modified one, the number of women in parliaments.