Gender Inequality

1. Gender Inequality Kristen Hecht kc8821a@student.american.edu http://eagle1.american.edu/~kc8821a/ American University School of International Service SIS-600-5: Int'l Affairs Stats & Methods – Dr. AssenAssenov

2. Research Question & Research Hypothesis • Research Question: What is the relationship between economic freedom and gender inequality? • Research hypothesis: Controlling for globalization, colonization, democracy, and GDP per person, we expect that gender inequality is negatively correlated with economic freedom.

3. Literature Review • Ann Cudd and Nancy Holmstrom (2011) • Theory: Capitalism is a necessary condition for gender equality. • Findings : Capitalist countries outperformed noncapitalist countries in terms of Gender Development Index (GDI) and Gender Empowerment Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM) • Charles Humana (1992) • Theory: There is a positive association between capitalism and gender inequality • Findings : Former centrally planned economies that switched to capitalism experienced a decline in gender equality • Valerie Bryson (2007) • Theory: There is a connection between gender equality and socialism • Findings: Case study on socialist changes made by United Kingdom, but is inconclusive as to whether or not these socialist changes have improved gender inequality in that country

4. Data • Unit of analysis/study: country • Source of the data: UNDP, Heritage Foundation, Pippa Norris’ online dataset • Reliability of the data: for all variables, data is available for a majority of the countries making data representative of the population being studied • Dependent Variable: • Gender inequality (Level of Measurement is interval-ratio/scores range from 0-1 with 1 representing the highest gender inequality) • Independent Variables: • Economic freedom (Level of Measurement is interval-ratio/scores range from 0-100 with 100 representing maximum economic freedom) • Globalization (Level of Measurement is interval-ratio/scores range from 1 to 100 with 100 representing maximum globalization) • Colonization (has country been colonized before?) (Level of Measurement is nominal/scores are either 1=yes or 2=no) • Democracy (Level of Measurement is interval-ratio/scores range from 1 to 100, with 100 representing highest level of democracy) • GDP per capita (Level of Measurement is interval-ratio/scores are in US dollars)

5. Descriptive Statistics Table • Dependent Variable (gender inequality): Scores range from .17 to .85. Its mean is .55, indicating that the average country is closer to gender inequality than to gender equality. The distribution of gender inequality is bi-modal. • Independent variables: For all interval-ratio variables, except GDP per capita, mean and median are fairly close, making the mean a representative central tendency of the cases. • Economic Freedom’s mean of 60.16 indicates that the average country is characterized by economic freedom. • Globalization’s mean of 58.43 indicates that the average country is globalized. • Colonization is a nominal variable, so mean and median are inappropriate measures of central tendency. Based on the mode (1= has been colonized) more countries have been colonized than not. • Democracy’s mean of 67.45 indicates that the average country is more democratic than not. • GDP per capita: there are extreme scores within the dataset which have caused a high standard deviation and large difference between the mean and median. not. • Some countries are missing for all variables, with globalization having the lowest number of observations.

6. Bivariate Analysis **. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level. Significance/P values are in parentheses. T-test for Colonization: Reject Ho. There is a statistically significant difference in gender inequality between countries who have been colonized and those that have not.

7. Model 3 (best model) residual scatterplot Regression Analysis(Dependent Variable is Gender Inequality) • Interpretations: • i) All coefficients are statistically significant in Models 1, 2, and 3. In models 4 and 5, democracy coefficient is not statistically significant. In model 5, when GDP per person is added, it alters the significance of economic freedom. There are issues of collinearity in both models 4 and 5. Because of this, and because all 3 coefficients in Model 3 are statistically significant at the 1% level, Model 3 is the best model. • ii) Economic freedom has a negative association with gender inequality. Globalization has a negative association with gender inequality. Colonization has a positive association with gender inequality. • iii) The adjusted R square statistics indicate that Model 1 (economic freedom) can explain 39.6% of the variation in gender inequality. Model 2 (economic freedom and globalization) can explain 76.0% variation in gender inequality. Model 3 (economic freedom, globalization, and colonization) can explain 78.0% variation in gender inequality.

8. Findings and Policy Implications • Findings: Based on the regression analysis, democracy and GDP per capita variables had to be dropped due to problems of collinearity. After dropping those variables, I accept the research hypothesis that controlling for globalization and colonization, gender inequality is negatively correlated with economic freedom. • Policy implications: • Economic freedom policies to adopt: free enterprise, limited government, reduce trade barriers • Globalization policies to adopt: increase circulation of ideas, languages, or popular culture; reduce barriers to international trade like tariffs, export fees, and import quotas • Colonization policies: do not colonize other countries or engage in activities where one nation claims sovereignty over another nation’s social structure, government, or economy.