Women's political empowerment and natural resource curse in developing countries

• Published in: Resources policy Vol. 75; p. 102442
• Main Authors: Awoa Awoa, Paul, Atangana Ondoa, Henri, Ngoa Tabi, Henri
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Kidlington Elsevier Ltd 01.03.2022; Elsevier Science Ltd
• Subjects: Citizen participation; Civil liberties; Civil society; Developing countries; Employment; Empowerment; Fertility; Gender inequality; LDCs; Natural resources; Natural resources curse; Political participation; Rights; Secondary education; Women; Women's political rights; Womens rights; Women's political rights; J18; O13; Developing countries; Natural resources curse; J16
• ISSN: 0301-4207; 1873-7641
• DOI: 10.1016/j.resourpol.2021.102442

Women's political rights are increasingly recognized as critical to modern states. Women constitute half of the world's population, but they account for less than a quarter of the membership of national parliaments globally. Starting from the “resource curse" literature, this paper empirically examines the impact of natural resource abundance on women's political empowerment in a large panel of 130 developing countries between 2002 and 2017. Our results derived from two-step system GMM show that total resource rent per capita has a strong negative impact on overall women's political empowerment. Similar evidences are found when using women's political participation, civil society participation, and women's civil liberties subindexes separately. We also find large differences in the resource abundance women's political empowerment relationship, depending on a country's institutional quality. Furthermore, we explore some transmission channels and find that resource abundance reduces female employment in the manufacturing and exchangeable service sectors, increases gender inequality in primary and secondary education, and increases female fertility rate. •Study the impact of natural resource abundance on women's political empowerment.•Natural resource abundance reduces women's political empowerment, and its three subcomponents: political participation, civil society participation, and civil liberties.•This negative relationship is greatly reduced when the quality of institutions improves.