The World's Women: Country Performance on the Gender Millennium Development Goals
Open Access
Author:
Nahvi, Susan Lynn
Area of Honors:
International Politics
Degree:
Bachelor of Arts
Document Type:
Thesis
Thesis Supervisors:
Douglas William Lemke, Thesis Supervisor Dr. Michael Barth Berkman, Thesis Honors Advisor
Keywords:
Millennium Development Goals Gender Women's rights International development Senegal Bangladesh Regime type Violence Wealth Traditionalism
Abstract:
The United Nations issued a set of goals called the Millennium Development Goals, which address a number of different problems, including gender discrimination. This paper looks at how countries performed on several indicators of gender equality that were measured by the UN such as: the ratio of girls to boys in secondary education, the percent of women in parliament, the share of women in nonagricultural wage employment, and maternal mortality. I examine how regime type, intra-state violence, wealth, and societal resistance to change (which I label as traditionalism) affect country performance. I do this through both a regression analysis and two case studies, looking at Senegal and Bangladesh. Being a democracy improves performance on all indicators except for percentage of women in parliament. Violence is bad for all indicators (except for women’s political participation), and wealth improves performance on all indicators except for share of women in nonagricultural employment. My measure for traditionalism was not significant for either the agricultural or education indicators, but being more traditional had a negative effect on both the percentage of women in parliament and maternal mortality. Senegal showed evidence to support these findings, but Bangladesh brought many other factors that affect gender equality to light.