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Islam, gender segregation, and political engagement: evidence from an experiment in Tunisia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 October 2020

Sarah Sunn Bush Open the ORCID record for Sarah Sunn Bush [Opens in a new window]  and
Lauren Prather
Sarah Sunn Bush*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Yale University, P.O. Box 208301, New Haven, CT06520-8301, USA
Lauren Prather
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, School of Global Policy and Strategy, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Dr. #0519, La Jolla, CA92003, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: sarah.bush@yale.edu
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Abstract

The Arab world has historically had limited descriptive representation for women, although that is changing. Will having more women officeholders lead women citizens to become more engaged? Or could it depress engagement due to pervasive gender biases? To answer these questions, this paper uses a nationally-representative experiment in Tunisia. Unexpectedly, people were less likely to want to contact their representatives when primed to think of a mixed-gender group of officeholders compared to an all-women group. This pattern did not vary according to respondents’ gender. Further analyses reveal that the effect was concentrated among Islamists, which is consistent with some Islamists’ support for gender segregation. This finding encourages research examining women's political presence in conservative environments where gender segregation is common.

Keywords

Comparative politicsdeveloping countriesexperimental researchgender and politics
Type
Original Article
Information
Political Science Research and Methods , Volume 9 , Issue 4 , October 2021 , pp. 728 - 744
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the European Political Science Association

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