The Relationship between Female Parliamentary Representation and the Inclusion of Gender Provisions in Peace Agreements

Abstract

In recent years, it has become more common for countries to include gender-sensitive provisions in peace agreements. Nevertheless, women’s representation and recognition as stakeholders in peace processes have remained limited. Existing scholarship suggests that the level of female parliamentary representation is positively associated with the adoption of gender-sensitive provisions in peace agreements. However, existing studies have not accounted for potentially important sources of bias that are plausibly related to both of these variables. Using agreement-level data from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP), and country-level data on female parliamentary representation from the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), I examine the relationship between female parliamentary representation and the inclusion of gender provisions in peace agreements signed between 1976 and 2018. After I adopt a bias-correction approach that accounts for fixed differences between countries in their levels of gender egalitarianism (among other omitted variables), I find that there is not a strong relationship between female parliamentary representation and the probability of adopting gender provisions in peace agreements.