Buying Women's Rights: The Role of Conflict and International Actors in Gender Reform Público
Laura Huber (Summer 2019)
Published
Abstract
Conflict's disruptive and destructive nature can both harm women's rights and challenge traditional gender norms to promote greater equality. This dissertation explores how international actors during and after conflict can promote gender reform by offering material incentives to states in exchange for improving women's rights domestically. This dissertation proposes that conflict increases the influence of international actors to promote gender reform. Gender reforms are costly and therefore require both political support and the necessary resources to successfully adopt and implement them. As a result of the securitization of women's rights, international actors have an incentive to promote the adoption of gender reforms and to offer material incentives to offset the associated costs of gender reform for the government. However, a state's level of sensitivity to material incentives for gender reform may differ. Conflict states may be particularly sensitive given their dependence upon international actors for resources and domestic shifts in gender norms during conflict that may create a unique short-term opportunity for gender reform. Therefore, conflict-affected states with high levels of international intervention and pressure should be especially likely to adopt women's rights reforms compared both to non-conflict states and to conflict states that have low levels of international intervention. This dissertation explores the interactive impact of conflict and international influence on gender reform at four levels of analysis: legal reform, women's political equality, individual beliefs, and gendered security sector reform. Using two unique data sets on the adoption of women's rights laws cross-nationally and the adoption of gendered security sector reform between 1988 and 2016, combined with data on women's political participation and individual surveys in Uganda, this dissertation supports the proposition that international actors have a moderating effect on women's rights after conflict. The overall results imply that international actors play a key, and at times necessary, role in promoting gender equality after conflict, but they have differential impacts depending on the type of gender reform examined.
Table of Contents
1 Introduction
1 1.1 Conflict and Women’s Rights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.2 International Actors and Diffusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.3 Conflict: Opening Doors for International Actors . . . . . . . . . . . 12
1.4 Contribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
1.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2 Conflict, Gender, and International Actors: An Overview of Current Literature . . . . . . . . . . . .24
2.1 Women, Peace, and Security - A Rising International Norm . . . . . . 26
2.1.1 Diffusion of Gender Reforms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
2.2 The Impact of Conflict on Gender Equality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
2.2.1 Conflict and “Militarized Masculinitiy” . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
2.2.2 Conflict and “Opportunity Structures” . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
2.3 International Third Parties and Domestic Policymaking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
2.4 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
3 Buying Women’s Rights: International Actors and Women’s Rights After Conflict . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
3.1 A Heavy Burden: The Costs of Gender Reform . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
3.2 Sharing the Costs: International Influences on Gender Reform . . . . 61
3.3 Conflict: Opening Doors for Gender Reform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
3.4 Pathways to Women’s Rights: Legal, Regulatory, or Behavioral Change 74
3.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
4 Cross-National Effects of Conflict on Women’s Rights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
4.2 Conflict, International Influences, and Gender Reform . . . . . . . . . 80
4.3 Research Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
4.3.1 Dependent Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
4.3.2 Independent Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
4.3.3 Control Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
4.4 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
4.4.1 Legal Gender Reform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
4.4.2 Women’s Rights Reform “On the Gound” . . . . . . . . . . . 108
4.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
5 One Step Forward, One Step Back: The Micro-level Impacts of Conflict and Aid on Men’s and Women’s Attitudes in Uganda . . . . .119
5.1 Heterogeneous Impacts of Conflict on Men and Women . . . . . . . . 125
5.1.1 The Mediating Impact of International Actors . . . . . . . . . 134
5.2 Gender and International Actors in Uganda’s Civil Wars . . . . . . . 139
5.3 Research Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
5.3.1 Dependent Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
5.3.2 Independent Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
5.3.3 Control Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
5.4 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
5.4.1 Robustness Checks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
5.5 Mobilizing Women: Conflict, Aid, and Local Elections . . . . . . . . . 175
5.6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
6 Sisters in Arms: Gendered Security Sector Reform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .183
6.1 Gender Reform in the Security Sector . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
6.2 Conflict and Gendered Security Sector Reform . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
6.2.1 International Pressure for Gendered Security Sector Reform . 194
6.2.2 Domestic Pressure for Gendered Security Sector Reform . . . 197
6.2.3 The Strategic Adoption of Gendered Security Sector Reform . 199
6.3 Research Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
6.3.1 Dependent and Independent Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
6.3.2 Control Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
6.4 Results and Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
6.4.1 Robustness Checks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
6.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
7 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .239
7.1 Summary and Implications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
7.2 Limitations and Future Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248
8 Appendix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .252
8.1 Chapter 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
8.2 Chapter 5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 356
8.3 Chapter 6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380
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