Women's representation in political office: A global vie

This study examines the viability of the macrostructural gender stratification theories of Blumberg and Chafetz for explaining cross-national variation in women's political office holding. Ordinary least squares models are employed to assess the relationships between economic, development, military, ideological, and political variables and women's representation in political office. Communism, women's share of the labor force, an index of human development, and the number of national legislative seats per 100,000 population are positively correlated with women's share of national legislative seats. The fertility rate negatively correlates with women's share of legislative seats.;When women's share of national cabinet posts is the dependent variable, women's share of the labor force, the index of human development are significance predictors. Communism, military expenditures, and the fertility have a negative correlation on women's representation in national cabinet posts.