Daughters do not affect political beliefs in a new democracy

Mapping Intimacies ◽

10.31235/osf.io/uwbfq ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Amanda Clayton ◽

Daniel de Kadt ◽

Nicolas K Dumas

Keyword(s):

South Africa ◽

Political Behavior ◽

Women's Rights ◽

Statistical Significance ◽

Women’S Rights ◽

Equivalence Testing ◽

Middle Income ◽

Political Opportunities ◽

Partisan Identification ◽

New Democracy

Having a daughter shapes parents' attitudes and behaviors in gender-egalitarian ways, a finding documented in multiple industrialized democracies. We test whether this travels to a young middle-income democracy where women's rights are tenuous: South Africa. Contrary to prior work we find no discernible effect on attitudes about women's rights or partisan identification. Using a unique dataset of over 7,500 respondents and an equivalence testing approach, we reject the null hypothesis of any effects of 5 percentage points or greater at conventional levels of statistical significance. We speculate that our null findings relate to opportunity: daughter effects are more likely when parents perceive economic, social, and political opportunities for women. When women's customary status and de factor opportunities are low, as in South Africa, having a daughter may have no effect on parents' political behavior. Our results demonstrate the virtues of diversifying case selection in political behavior beyond economically wealthy democracies.

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Women’s Constitutional Rights

10.1093/oso/9780192893925.003.0007 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 176-212

Author(s):

Berihun Adugna Gebeye

Keyword(s):

South Africa ◽

Human Rights ◽

Women's Rights ◽

Cultural Relativism ◽

Women’S Rights ◽

Constitutional Rights ◽

Substantive Content ◽

General Investigation ◽

Standard Of Comparison ◽

Design And Practice

This chapter explains how legal syncretism influences and manifests itself in the design and practice of constitutional rights—with a particular focus on women’s rights—in the constitutional systems of Nigeria, South Africa, and Ethiopia. The chapter demonstrates how the interaction between the liberal and indigenous conceptions of rights in a constitutional space produces unique regimes of women’s rights in these countries. The chapter first presents a brief theory of women’s rights as a standard of comparison and evaluation; this is done through a more general investigation of women’s rights in international law. This is then followed by a more focused discussion of women’s constitutional rights in Nigeria, South Africa, and Ethiopia. Such discussion explores the substantive content and the way in which women’s rights are constitutionalized, as well as their practical and judicial applications. The syncretic nature of women’s rights in these countries sheds some light on the importance of looking beyond the universalism versus cultural relativism debate when trying to enforce human rights in Africa.

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