Gender Equality Policy in Authoritarian Regimes

Historically authoritarian regimes tend to provide and protect human rights more reluctantly than electoral democracies. In certain cases authoritarian powers manage to justify these international human rights violation making them a part of national defense strategy and making citizens more satisfied with their government’s work although their rights are abused . However, some recent researches demonstrate that despite the overall violation of human rights, authoritarian regimes might enact gender equality policy, mainly, for the purposes of power legitimating . Study of state feminism concludes that non‐democratic states often enact women‐friendly policies for the purpose of maintaining power. More globally, it has been argued that autocrats might exploit feminism and the ideas of gender equality to create a democratic façade, spread authoritarianism and undermine democracies . Despite these views, some authoritarian regimes indeed show relatively good results in terms of gender equality, improve with time and do not fall behind electoral democracies, according to global statistics. This study, therefore, focuses on gender equality in authoritarian states. The aim of this paper is to distinguish the factors that are the most significant for women’s status in the authoritarian regimes on the basis of a quantitative analysis of 35 authoritarian states.