Jamille Bigio and Rachel Vogelstein
132 foreign affairs
positions; as a result, women now hold nearly 50 percent of local govern-
ment positions, compared with 27 percent in 2010. And in Mexico, a
record number of nearly 3,000 women ran in the election in 2018, lead-
ing to full gender parity in Congress and the first elected female mayor
of Mexico City. The largest percentage increase in female parliamentar-
ians as a result of an election in 2018 took place in Djibouti, where wom-
en’s representation rose from a meager 11 percent in 2013 to 26 percent.
There have been setbacks in some places—such as in Iceland, where
women’s parliamentary representation fell from 47 percent in 2016 to
38 percent in 2017, the lowest it had been since 2007. Overall, how-
ever, women’s global parliamentary representation has vastly im-
proved: as of September 2019, women held 24 percent of all seats in
national parliaments around the world, nearly double their represen-
tation 20 years ago. Although women’s representation remains far
from equal to that of men, the rate of change is increasing.
Female representation is not simply a matter of fairness. Research
shows that gender diversity in leadership correlates with better gover-
nance. Women are more likely than men to advocate laws supporting
children and social welfare. In India, a study by the scholars Raghaben-
dra Chattopadhyay and Esther Duflo found that village councils led by
women were more likely to support investing in clean drinking water,
childhood immunizations, and education. And in Norway, women’s
representation in municipal councils has been linked to greater child-
care coverage, which has improved women’s ability to participate in the
workplace. Gender diversity in governments has also been associated
with decreased corruption: an analysis by the economists Chandan Jha
and Sudipta Sarangi of over 125 countries found that corruption levels
are lower in countries with a higher percentage of female legislators.
Women are also more likely to reach across political divides: a 2015
study of the U.S. Senate found that female senators more frequently
worked across the aisle than did their male counterparts. Research
from Uppsala University, in Sweden, has shown that women’s politi-
cal participation is associated with a lower risk of civil war and a
lower incidence of state-perpetrated political violence, such as kill-
ings, forced disappearances, torture, and political imprisonment. A
quantitative analysis by the political scientist Mary Caprioli found
that when women’s parliamentary representation increased by five
percent, a country was one-fifth as likely to respond to an interna-
tional crisis with violence.