The Cost of Compliance : The effect of the convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women (CEDAW) on the situation of women's political, social and economic human rights

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The Cost of Compliance:

The effect of the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) on the situation of

women’s political, social and economic human rights.

Department of Politics and Management, University of Konstanz Bachelor Thesis

1

^st

Referee: Prof. Dr. Gerald Schneider 2

^nd

Referee: Dr. Isabelle Stadelmann-Steffen

Presented in September 2008 Anita Gohdes

^∗

Matr.-No.: 01/613045 Rolandufer 18, 10179 Berlin Email: anita.gohdes@googlemail.com

Abstract: Recent studies have called into question the effectiveness of international human rights treaties. In this study I examine the variations in compliance that governments display concerning the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). I argue that states will only keep their promises if the benefits of doing so outweigh the costs involved. In distinguishing between implementation, reputation and domestic audience costs, I contend that states parties are more likely to comply with women’s political rights than their social and economic rights, as respect for the latter categories yields fewer benefits to governments. This expectation is confirmed, measuring the effect for 152 countries across a period of 20 years with the help of ordered logistic regression. Also, I find that religious influences have a negative effect on respect for women’s rights, while democratic institutions improve women’s position in society.

∗I would like to thank Gerald Schneider, Isabelle Stadelmann-Steffen, Willi Nagl, Ersin ¨Oz¸sahin, Johannes Kleibl, Nina Schulzek and my parents for helpful comments. All errors are mine.

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1 Introduction

1.1 The Internationalisation of Womens Human Rights

The past fifty years have witnessed a significant increase and internationalisation of human rights norms and agreements. With the ratification of numerous treaties, the majority of UN member states have dedicated themselves to the improvement and global advancement of human rights respect. Reality, however, clearly shows not only that governments fail to abide by these standards, but that they also treat different human rights with different salience (Cole, 2005). In this study, I argue that states will only comply with womens human rights law if the costs of complying are lower than the consequences they will have to bear if they fail to abide. I back my argument with the help of the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) that addresses the broad field of ending discrimination against women in the political, social and economic sphere. Three types of costs that influence the decision of compliance are identified: the duties imposed on states through the treaty text, the reputational consequences a country faces and the domestic constraints of audience costs. I argue that the configuration of these costs varies among the different areas addressed by CEDAW. My main expectation is that states parties are more likely to comply with women’s political rights than socio-economic rights, as respect for socio-economic rights yields no lucrative benefit to governments. Testing 152 countries over a period of twenty years with the help of ordered logistic regression, this expectation is confirmed. Additionally, I test in what way the level of respect for women’s rights is influenced by religious traditions and the level of democracy prevailing.

This paper is organized as follows. I commence with a discussion of previous findings in general human rights research and then, more specifically, the concept of women’s human rights and the implications of CEDAW. The next section identifies the theoretical model, concluding with the hypotheses derived there-from. After specifying the research design, I test the hypotheses with the help of descriptive and multivariate statistics. I conclude with a short summary of the main results and their implications.

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2 Previous Findings in Human Rights Research

Empirical human rights research mainly focusses on the analysis and measurement of governments’ respect for human rights and the mechanisms that generate, encourage and influence political and civil rights abuses and protection. These so-called first amendment- type rights include, but are not limited to, physical integrity rights (PIR), the freedom of speech, of assembly and of association (e.g. Poe and Tate, 1994; Poe et al., 1999; Dav- enport, 2007; Vreeland, 2008)¹. State repression is usually translated as the exercised or threatened physical sanctioning of governments towards political opposition and citizens (see Davenport, 2007: 2). Cross-national studies using data sets like the Political Terror Scale (PTS) have attempted to assess both the respect and risk of government repression (Poe and co-authors, 1994, 1999, 2006), and have found variations in the respect accorded the different categories of PRIs (Cingranelli and Richards, 1999).

The predominance of indicators that have been developed in order to measure civil and political rights has led to an institutional, procedural and normative marginalisation of socio-economic rights, which is why they remain significantly under-researched (Hunt, 1996; Arambulo, 1999). Conventional definitions of state repression usually do not con- sider what are referred to as ‘second-generation [...] rights (Davenport, 2007: 3)’, calling them economic and social ‘privileges’, not human rights. Keith reports that she refrains from assessing economic and social human rights precisely because they prove ‘more difficult to measure objectively (Keith, 1999: 97)’ than the civil and political rights laid down in the ICCPR. The very recent improvement of research dealing with socio-economic human rights can largely be attributed to the much-needed development of indicators that try to capture these rights in a sophisticated way (e.g. Cingranelli and Richards, 2008).

2.1 State Compliance with Human Rights Treaties

There are different theoretical approaches that lead to alternative expectations of the effectiveness of International Human Rights Treaties (IHRT) (see Simmons, 1998; Neumayer, 2005 for an overview). From a (neo-) realistic point of view, states, as sovereign actors in the international arena have no incentive to grant international law any real influence in their domestic affairs or see the protection of human rights as a foreign policy priority (Morgenthau, 1985). If the disrespect for an individual’s human rights in State A has no direct impact on State B, ratifying international human rights law as an ‘expressive act’

(see Hathaway, 2002) should mean little costs for governments, even if there exists no real motivation to abide by the agreement.

Rational Functionalism, like the realist tradition, is concerned with the lack of incentives international agreements provide for states to actually comply. However, it does

1See Goldstein (1978) and Davenport (2007) for a more complete account of first amendment-type rights.

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acknowledge their functional purpose of solving collective action problems. The main factor influencing state compliance here is the concept of a state’s reputation (Keohane, 1984). If the defection from an agreement will damage a government’s reputation and with it its future cooperations, it will weigh the relative costs and benefits before decid- ing whether to comply or not. Other studies in this vein have found that uncertainty in domestic politics has an influence on state compliance with international treaties (see Downs and Rocke, 1995). Well-organised interest groups and advocacy networks can have a strong effect on the way treaty implementation is conducted (Liese, 2006). Here rational functionalism coincides with expectations of classic regime theory, termed ‘democratic le- galism’ by Simmons (1998: 83). It predicts that democratic states generally have a higher level of compliance with international agreements than states lacking democratic domestic institutions, as their intergovernmental relations are usually rule-based, which makes them more receptive to constraints imposed by international law (Simmons, 1998: 84).

One of the first studies to systematically test compliance with a human rights treaty was Keith’s (1999) analysis of the ICCPR. She comes to the conclusion that the ratification of the ICCPR has no direct effect when tested with the help of multivariate analysis. She does, however, maintain that the effects of IHRT might be less clear in their mechanism, i.e. working as a social pressure tool or displaying the final step within a long sociali- sation process. Both legal scholars and political scientists have since confirmed Keith’s findings and gone even further in claiming that state ratification of IHRTs can lead to worse human rights records, with states using the official membership as a means to draw attention away from the real, and often deteriorating, domestic human rights situation (Hathaway, 2002, 2003, 2007; Hafner-Burton and Tsutsui, 2005, 2007; Hafner-Burton et al., 2008). Authoritarian states that lack domestic democratic institutions and tend to oppress opposing interests often fail or refuse to comply with the standards of the treaties they have agreed to abide by; a fact also attributed to weak monitoring and enforcement mechanisms that make the costs for compliance higher than for defection (cf. Neumayer, 2005). Apart from having a higher human rights performance overall, democratic states are more reluctant to join human rights treaties if they cannot abide by them, knowing that they face domestic pressure and negative exposure if they fail to comply (cf. von Stein, 2005; Liese, 2006).

Hafner-Burton (2005) finds that international rules, such as preferential trade agreements (PTAs), work by means of persuasion and coercion to bring about behavioural changes within their member states. Human rights agreements thus often lack essential tools of coercion such as material benefits and sanctions that would provide important incentives for states parties to comply with their promises. In this vein, Avdeyeva (2007) argues that human rights agreements work through a third mechanism of acculturation. In analysing state compliance with CEDAW on policies concerning Violence against Women (VAW)

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in post-communist countries, she finds that states often ratify IHRT as a response to external pressures without any intention of actually changing their behaviour. Instead, she suggests that in joining these agreements, states try to formally assimilate to the global arena. However, the ratification process makes them vulnerable to social pressure - which in turn can lead to a certain amount of compliance with the agreed norms. Thus the role of international civil society and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) (Hafner-Burton and Tsutsui, 2005) in monitoring, pressurising and holding states parties accountable for their human rights behaviour seems to be vital to the effectiveness of the treaties. In their qualitative analysis of transnational advocacy networks, Keck and Sikkink (1998) find that especially the networks demanding women’s suffrage and VAW have been suc- cessful in using international exposure or ‘boomerang’ patterns (Keck and Sikkink, 1998:

13). They describe this process by which interest groups that are blocked by their own national government activate a transnational network where members in other countries then pressure their own states and third-party organisations to put pressure on the block- ing state to refrain from its unjust activities.

2.2 Women’s Human Rights

With her article ‘Women’s Rights as Human Rights’, Bunch (1990) made a pivotal con- tribution to a discourse that explicitly addresses the failure of international human rights law to acknowledge that the concept of human rights has predominantly focussed on issues concerning men’s human rights abuses. In re-labelling the discrimination against women as a human rights abuse, this issue should no longer be treated as an exclusive and separate matter.

Two of the most influential publications on women’s human rights consist of detailed qualitative analyses of women’s human rights that distinguish between regional, cultural, political, legal and lastly economic challenges (Cook, 1994; Peters and Wolper, 1995). The conclusions identify socio-economic discrimination as the greatest impediment that women face at the turn of the millennium, an issue persisting across all cultures and regions. The lack of these rights is seen as the major cause for offences as diverse as human trafficking, forced prostitution, femicide, women battering and domestic abuse (cf. Gould, 2002: 10- 11).

However, the philosophical discussion of women’s equality as basic human right has only recently found its way into empirical research. The main area of study to date has narrowly focussed on the effect of globalization on women’s socio-economic position. Countries that are more open to trade have been found to generally grant women a higher standard of economic rights (Neumayer and De Soysa, 2007; Richards and Gelleny, 2007), although not all indicators of economic globalization yielded the same results.There have also been

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attempts to assess the development of women’s human rights globally through rather vague indicators such as female literacy rates (Gray et al., 2006; Hathaway, 2007) or the percentage of female seats in parliament (Hathaway, 2002).

Bussmann (2007) finds that economic integration is equally beneficial to women, in the form of better access to healthcare and education, as it is to men. The study also shows that increased globalization does not seem to have an effect on women’s political representation, an indicator of the varying nature of women’s political and socio-economic rights.

In a recent study, Sweeny (2007) takes a broader approach and analyses the influence of four major trends on government respect of women’s rights: democracy, political secular- ism, economic globalization and the internationalization of human rights norms. She finds that the ratification of human rights treaties such as CEDAW does not have a significant influence, but that economically developed and especially politically secular governments are more likely to respect women’s economic rights.

2.3 The Women’s Convention

The United Nations (UN) Women’s Convention CEDAW entered into force on September 3rd 1981². Besides the International Bill of Rights, it is one of the most widely ratified human rights treaties and the major international instrument concerning women, built on the principles of equality and non-discrimination³. Article 1 of the Convention defines discrimination against women as:

‘any distinction, exclusion or restriction made on the basis of sex which has the effect or purpose of impairing or nullifying the recognition, enjoyment or exercise by women, irrespective of their marital status, on a basis of equality of men and women, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social⁴, cultural, civil or any other field.’

As this definition suggests, the Convention is designed to have a wide-ranging effect, including womens equal participation in political, economic and social life. Also, it com- pels states to take all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against women by any person, organization or enterprise (CEDAW, Art. 2(e)). The definition of equality

2CEDAW was adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on December 18th 1979 and opened for signature on March 1st 1980. The Convention entered into force in 1981, which means that from 1982 onwards, it became legally binding.

3The term ‘International Bill of Rights’ is commonly used when referring to the three main UN Human Rights Treaties: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCRP) and The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). As of August 2008, there have been 185 ratifications, accessions and succession to CEDAW. States that have only signed and not ratified are not bound to put the provisions of the Con- vention into practice. States parties are permitted to submit reservations when ratifying the Convention (CEDAW, Art. 28, 29), if these are compatible with the general objective and purpose of it. See UN Di- vision for the Advancement of Women: URL: http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/states.htm.

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used by CEDAW encompasses both formal orde jure equality as well as actual orde facto equality, implying that states are not only held responsible for themeans they undertake, but also for theresults of their efforts to end discrimination.

The UN Committee on CEDAW is the main body responsible for monitoring and evalu- ating states parties’ compliance with the Convention. It frequently interprets the treaty text and disseminates recommendations to help states in fully translating the standards into domestic law and practice (CEDAW, Art. 17). States parties are expected to follow the Convention’s reporting procedure by which they submit a report on the legislative, judicial, administrative or other measures which they have adopted to give effect to the provisions of the present Convention and on the progress made (CEDAW, Art. 18).

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3 Theoretical Framework: The Varying Costs of Compliance

The theoretical model presented here draws from previous studies and approaches that provide us with different explanations of state compliance that will help with the assessment of the different costs of state compliance with a treaty like CEDAW.

I assume the states parties to the Convention to be rational actors who pursue their goals with the help of cost-benefit calculations of their specific actions (see Hathaway, 2003).

With regard to CEDAW, three categories of costs can be distinguished. First, Interna- tional Human Rights Law teaches us that a state is compelled to attend to certain duties and obligations imposed by CEDAW. Second, Rational Functionalism elaborates on the role a states reputation plays and lastly, a multitude of approaches, such as classic regime theory, have stressed the importance of the domestic opportunities that exist for opposition and interest groups.

The differences in the nature of political and socio- economic rights and the way in which womens general status is affected by IHRT will assist in identifying the varying costs of compliance of the categories of rights. Political rights include the right to vote, to run for a political office and to hold elected and appointed government positions. Social and economic rights are often intertwined, but generally speaking all rights concerning family law correspond to women’s social rights, such as the right to initiate divorce, to enter marriage on an equal basis with a man, but also the right to health care, education, freedom from religious practises such as female genital mutilation and forced sterilization. Eco- nomic rights usually include the right to equal pay for equal work, the freedom of choice of profession, job security and maternity leave and freedom of sexual harassment in the workplace. I will mostly refer to the differences between women’s political and women’s socio-economic rights here.

3.1 State Duties imposed by CEDAW

Organizational theory shows that changing the status quo - be it only legally on paper or in actual practice - involves costs that a state has to be prepared to burden (Chayes and Chayes, 1993). Whether a state is prepared to comply with an IHRT is thus dependent on its assessment of these costs. Only if the costs for these rights can be broken down and constructed into direct responsibilities and duties that a state has to fulfil, will there be the possibility of change, of monitoring and perhaps even of advocating for them. Depending on the nature of the right, this might be simple, as is the case with so-called ‘corresponding rights’ (see Steiner et al., 2008: 185) implying for example that the right not to be tortured corresponds to the state’s duty not to torture its citizens. Other duties might not be explicitly spelled out in the treaty, such as a women’s right of equal education would

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imply the state’s obligation to create institutions and procedures ensuring and monitoring the equal participation of females in the state’s educational system. Building on legal theory (Shue, 1996; Donnelly 2003; Steiner et al., 2008) five types of state duties are distinguished⁵, which vary considerably across different categories included in CEDAW, as will be shown.

Generally speaking, the state’s duty of respecting the rights that have been imposed by signing CEDAW is the most fundamental and widely accepted obligation the government has to fulfil. As a negative or ‘hands-off’ duty (Steiner, 2008: 186), the state is to respect the individual and not prevent him or her from the enjoyment of the right, even if the right is never actually exercised (see Donnelly, 2003: 9).

However, as clearly formulated in the Women’s Convention, the duty of respect also implies the obligation of the state to ensure that others also keep their ‘hands-off’. Article 2(e) entails that states will not only be held responsible for the public sphere located between state and the individual, but also for the private sphere between individuals, as well as individuals and non-governmental bodies. Whereas a woman’s right to vote and her freedom to work in a profession outside of her house might both theoretically rely on the state’s respect thereof, the actual realization varies with the state’s capacity and willing- ness to create institutions and procedures and thus an environment in which these rights can actually be exercised. While public funds are also needed in order to institutionalise the right of women to vote, for a government to exercise influence over private individuals’

relationships, as would be the case with family law, significantly more time, expertise and financial backing is required (see Brysk, 2005; Ch. 1, 3; Freeman, 2002: Ch.6).

The next set of duties obliges the states parties to protect the stated rights and prevent violations thereof. As displayed above, CEDAW implies that states ensure the full enjoyment of non-discrimination of women, which means they must do whatever is necessary to protect women from discrimination. Protection, in contrast to mere respect of rights has been vital to the advancement of women’s rights (see Steiner et al., 2008: 188). As with the creation of institutional frameworks, protecting rights involves public expenditures that tend to vary according to the area at issue. The protection of women’s human rights in areas that affect men and women equally can often be guaranteed through existing institutional expertise, other areas such as inequality within a marriage involve the creation of new forms of protective means (amnesty international, 2006: 62).

With the initiation of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), the state’s duty to provide goods and services to satisfy the individual’s rights to e.g. food and shelter (Steiner et al., 2008: 189) was brought to the centre of international attention. These so-called positive rights generally have the effect of directly improving the situation of the rights-holder (instead of just ‘not worsening’ it, as with

5Later in this study, when I refer to a states respect for women’s rights, I am actually implying these duties.

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the right not to be tortured). Women’s economic rights, such as the right to maternity leave and the right to equal pay for equal work generally require far higher normative, institutional and financial state involvement than the right for women to join political parties and vote. Studies have shown that basic socio-economic rights such as the right to own and inherit land, own credit, livestock and technical know-how are often denied to women. For a state to end this discrimination, a change in agrarian laws, family laws, rural employment strategies and most importantly a change in the normative concept of paternity are needed (see Butegwa, 1994; Youssef, 1995). One might argue that, given the political representation of women, these reforms might yield electoral benefits for the government. However, protecting the socio-economic rights of one part of the population directly implies ‘taking away’ benefits from the other half in this case. By contrast, allowing women to run for a political office only requires widening out the electoral procedure, i.e. ‘erasing a ban’, a process that also affects the previous candidate group, but with less severe distributional consequences (see Mertus, 1995; Youssef, 1995; Cook, 1994) The last duty reinforces the differences in the nature of political, economic and social rights. States parties are obliged to promote and advocate for the protection and respect of the rights they have agreed to comply with. This duty expects states to complement their prior efforts with a holistic framework aimed at promoting the rights laid down in CEDAW, thus imposing further costs on the state. By consequence, states parties face a multitude of tasks that vary according to the nature of the right. For a country like Tunisia, reforming stereotypes such as ‘family codes’, that guide the role of women within the family and marriage bears far higher costs than granting women increased political representation⁶. Women’s human rights violations that are rooted in cultural practices, such as female genital mutilation (FGM) display the need for state promotion very clearly.

Legal provisions declaring FGM an illegal act that is subjected to punishment may help abolish it in countries where the practice was ‘imported’ by immigrants and is thus not the conventional routine (see Toubia, 1995). In countries, however, where the majority of the population follows this tradition, publicly accessibly information, state funded campaigns and counselling opportunities for victims, potential victims and their parents have proven to be far more important than the mere legislative backing (Oboler, 2001)⁷.

Not all rights stated in the Women’s Convention have thus been equally accepted universally in different cultures and societies (see below). I expect technical and somewhat neutral matters such as the right to vote (see Donnelly, 2003) to therefore be easier and cheaper to be institutionalised than for example the social right of a woman to enter into marriage on a basis of equality with men or the right of a women to choose her profession freely (Jawad, 1998).

6See ‘North Africa: Women Secure More Rights’, in Africa Renewal (United Nations): 12. August 2008 URL: http://allafrica.com/stories/200808130656.html.

7Thede jureexistence of legal provisions banning FGM has been in place in most Sub-Saharan African countries since the ruling of their colonial governments. However, public opinion to date shows disdain for these rulings or remains ignorant of their existence (see Toubis, 1995).

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3.2 Reputation Costs

Reputational concerns have been a major feature for international relations scholars in explaining state compliance with international agreements (see Keohane, 1984; Axelrod, 1984). The main argument is that states tend to comply as they fear the exposure of being unreliable - an image that in turn might strain other cooperative agreements as well as prospective treaties and arrangements. The opportunity costs arising from uncooperative behaviour can thus be higher than the benefits the state would have gained in defecting in a certain area (see Sartori, 2002), such as not complying with human rights treaties.

Downs and Jones (2002), however, argue that the impact of reputation on future cooperative agreements is more complicated, as states tend to possess multiple reputations that vary across issue areas⁸. They contend that defecting in one particular area does not mean a state jeopardizes future benefits of all its agreements, as states are not seen as single unitary actors that display the same character in all areas.

I follow Downs and Jones in assuming that states will be more likely to comply with a treaty if they expect the benefits of future agreements to be dependent on it. To give an example, only if a state thinks that ensuring women’s social rights will have an impact on e.g. its future trade agreements and current foreign affairs, and only if this impact will yield a greater benefit than the costs that are created in complying with CEDAW, will the state choose to comply.

Other studies have shown that the ‘expressive’ role of ratifying human rights treaties can deflect external pressure for real change (see Hathaway, 2002: 1857) and that the costs of complying with the given standards are only outweighed by reputational benefits if the treaty has effective monitoring and enforcement mechanisms and is valued to have high international standing (see Downs and Jones, 2002).

As we have seen, CEDAW does entail a certain reporting procedure (see 2.3), but the past has shown that states are likely to contest, deflect and often not even acknowledge the legal responsibility for their own wrongs (see Cook, 1994, Brysk, 2005). Though Hafner- Burton (2005) has confirmed the influence of PTAs, the human rights indicator used here exclusively measures the respect for civil liberties. It is not likely that a state will be held accountable for ignoring its international commitment to respect womens human rights (Cook, 1994), and if this were so, exclusively with respect to women’s political and civil liberties.

8These multiple reputations would, however, take time to develop, resulting in the fact that new states would be more willing to comply with all agreed standards until they had developed their ‘own history’

of a reputation and werent as dependent on every action to display their trustworthiness (see Downs and Jones, 2002).

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CEDAW is to date the only human rights treaty that recognizes the influence of religion, culture and tradition on gender relations and behaviour⁹ and holds states responsible to take measures to eliminate relevant customs and practices that subordinate women’s human rights for their purposes (see Cook, 1994). Therefore, in accordance to a state’s reputation, the concept of cultural relativism has to be addressed. This ‘view’ rests on the basic idea of a non-judgemental analysis of cultures in order to avoid applying Western- dominated categories and values (Donnelly, 2007: 294).

While I will refrain from commenting on or judging the current discourse on cultural relativism, it does seem important to acknowledge that the level of universal acceptance concerning women’s human rights varies. There is a broad band of literature discussing the recognition of women’s human rights, especially in Islamic Law, with the main debate being held in the area of family, inheritance and property law (see Esposito, 1982: Ch.2;

Jawad, 1998; Behrouz, 2003). Generally, the constraining influence of religion on government respect of women’s rights seems to be significant, particularly in the case of Catholics and Muslims (see La Porta et al., 1999). That said, women’s political equality has be- come less controversial in both international law discussions and religious discourses, and is rarely subjected to direct criticism. I therefore assume compliance with women’s political rights to have a stronger effect on a state’s reputation than economic and social rights.

In conclusion, if the costs of defecting and not keeping to the agreed objectives of CEDAW are relatively low, a state will not have any incentive to comply. As women’s human rights are only of marginal interest to the international agenda and the only empirical evidence points towards a relationship between PTAs and civil and political rights, I expect states to see their respect of women’s socio-economic rights as independent from their reputation in other areas, such as trade and finance. I also expect religious influences to have a negative effect on the diffusion of universal women’s rights standards, as states will reason their non-compliance through the incompatibility with their religious customs. The failure to respect women’s political rights could however have an impact on a state’s reputation, due to their (near) universally accepted character, which should also have effect on the following category of costs.

3.3 Audience Costs

The concept of audience costs originally derives from international bargaining models that try to assess the costs and risks to a state of either attacking or backing down during a crisis (see Fearon, 1994). In sending signals to the opponent by making a public announce- ment in international conflicts, leaders demonstrate their credibility to the outside world,

9See: General Recommendation No. 21 (13th session, 1994), Committee on the Elimination of Discrimi- nation Against Women.

URL: http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/recommendations/recomm.htm#recom21.

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as non-compliance with their statement would have domestic consequences (Weeks, 2008).

If the leader does not keep his or her word, s/he risks domestic punishment, a mechanism most often attributed to democracies, rather than autocratic regimes.

The idea of audience costs as the costs a government has to face if it fails to keep to international communications can be applied to state compliance with international human rights law. In ratifying CEDAW, a state not only communicates to other states that it will abide by the agreed standards, it also signals to the domestic arena that reform is going to take place. In turn, if a state fails to bring about the promised change, domestic groups can use the Convention as a powerful tool for advocating their interests (see Keck and Sikkink, 1998). Weeks (2008) distinguishes three factors that contribute to the onset of audience costs. First, the domestic audience needs to have the incentive, the capacity and the ability to coordinate a protest against government action or its failure to act. In terms of human rights performance, interest groups such as NGOs provide this platform.

This idea is confirmed by studies showing that states oppressing internal opposition have been found to fail in complying with the agreed standards significantly more often (see Hafner-Burton et al., 2008), which can be explained by the lack of audience costs that could be imposed on them for non-compliance.

Second, the visibility to outsiders of the internal sanctioning mechanisms is crucial to the effect of audience costs (see Weeks, 2008). To translate this into the case of human rights compliance, it is the ability of domestic interest groups to communicate and network to the ‘outsiders’ the non-compliant behaviour of their government, in order to create the above-explained boomerang effect that increases the audience costs. Women’s rights activists have often claimed the international advocacy networks and their national counterparts to have been the decisive actors within the struggle for women’s equality. In- ternal protest that manages to be effectively projected to the international arena creates negative exposure for national governments that influences the decision-making process of complying with or defecting from an agreement.

Finally, in determining the possibility of audience costs, one has to ask whether the audience is actually in favour of state compliance. In the case of CEDAW, does the public actually want to end all discrimination against women? The status quo of inequality is most likely benefiting some part of the domestic population, which makes change all the more difficult (see Cook, 1994). As displayed above, the influence of religious traditions and beliefs plays an important role here. For audience costs to unfold their intended impact, interest groups that have the capacity to challenge the status quo have to be able to articulate their discontent with the non-compliant behaviour. I therefore expect two factors to have a principal influence on the situation of womens rights, besides the ratification of CEDAW: First the existence of democratic domestic institutions will have a positive effect on the ability of interest groups to pressurise governments into respecting women’s

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rights and thus have a positive effect on the overall situation. Second, the existence of strong traditional organisations, such as religious institutions will have a negative effect on women’s status, as these groups will influence governments to maintain the traditional role of women in society.

To summarise, how do these audience costs differ between women’s economic, social and political rights? If the costs of domestic pressure and sanctions are dependent on interests groups’ abilities to cooperate, formulate and pressurize their government with national and international help, they are likely to differ depending on the issue that is at stake.

Whereas the international movement for women’s suffrage is described as a global phenomenon that set out to abolish the most fundamental legal inequality of opportunity, other far-reaching discriminatory realities are harder to define and approach in such a holistic way. The basic motivation of the women’s suffrage movement was easy to identify: the law forbade women to vote, thus the solution was simple, a legal change was all that was needed. As Keck and Sikkink put it: ‘The issue lent itself to framing and action that appealed to the most basic values of the liberal state - equality, liberty and democracy (1998: 53)’. Many of the basic socio-economic rights to date lack a concise formulation of their implicit duties (see Chapman, 2007; Apodaca, 1998, 2007) as well as an appropriate standing on the agenda of religious discourses, thus failing to make them universally acceptable, understandable and advocate-able.

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3.4 Hypotheses

Following the theoretical cost-benefit model of compliance with CEDAW developed above;

hypothesised relationships are derived on CEDAW’s ratification and state compliance with women’s political and socio-economic rights. The first hypothesis reflects the main argument of this paper, while the other two concentrate on additional factors that impact on CEDAW’s effectiveness. In assessing the different types of costs and analysing their variations concerning the categories of women’s human rights, I expect states to grant more respect to the political rights of women than to socio-economic rights, as compliance with political rights bears lower costs than non-compliance. Further, reputation and audience costs show that the domestic democratic institutions and the influence of religious laws and traditions are likely to influence these government practices.

H1: The ratification of CEDAW is likely to have a stronger effect on states parties’ compliance with women’s political rights than with women’s socio-economic rights

H2: Democratic states that have ratified CEDAW are likely to generally have a higher level of women’s political, socio-economic rights than autocratic states that have ratified the Convention.

H3a: The influence of Islamic Law and Traditions is likely to negatively affect the state’s respect for women’s political and socio-economic rights.

H3b: The influence of Catholic Customs and Traditions is likely to negatively affect a state’s respect for women’s political and socio-economic rights.

3.5 Alternative Explanations

As the literature suggests, there are many factors that influence the status of women in a given country and there is an ongoing lively discussion on both the causal effect of human rights treaties in general and a multitude of other factors impacting women’s human rights situation (see Landman, 2003: Ch. 9).

Many scholars reason that human rights treaties might not have a positive effect at all, and that on the contrary, their ratification could lead to a deteriorating human rights situation (Keith, 1999; Hathaway, 2002; Vreeland, 2008, Hafner-Burton and Tsutsui, 2007).

As these studies concentrate on government repression of physical integrity rights and not on the discrimination of women in particular, I do not expect the causality to be the same.

At the domestic level, it has been argued that democratically accountable institutions explain the actual respect of human rights, irrespective of whether a state has signed a treaty

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or not. Also, the general level of development is likely to have an effect on the standard of women’s rights, as especially many of the socio-economic rights are closely linked to the capacity a state has to provide basic necessities such as health care and education (Hunt, 1996; Steiner et al., 2008).

In previous literature, a state’s level of international interdependence is identified as an important factor influencing women’s general status in society. States that are highly integrated into the international community, with strong trade relations (Neumayer and De Soysa, 2007), a multitude of memberships in international governmental organisations (IGOs) and many international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) working within their boundaries will have higher costs to bear if they fail to keep to the agreed human rights agreements (Hafner-Burton, 2005; Landman, 2005; Neumayer, 2005). I shall take into account the most frequently mentioned alternative explanations in my statistical model.

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4 Research Design

4.1 Data and Operationalization

4.1.1 Case Selection

To test my hypotheses, I have opted for a pooled time-series-cross-section design to account for the variation in compliance over both time and space, with the observation unit being country-year. My sample of countries consists of 152 countries for which data was available on both their status of ratification of CEDAW and their respect for women’s human rights¹⁰. The time period covers 20 years from 1981 (when the Convention came into force) to 2000.

4.1.2 Dependent Variables

The dependent variables that provide estimates for women’s status are women’s political (WOPOL), social (WOSOC) and economic (WECON) rights, taken from the Cingranelli and Richards (2008) Human Rights Database. WOPOL, WOSOC and WECON are annual cross-national observations¹¹. Using the annual United States (US) Departments Country Reports on Human Rights Practices and Amnesty International (AI) Annual Re- ports¹², discrete variables are coded that take on one of four ordinal values that document different levels of rights that are granted to women:

‘0’ for No rights: There are none of the given rights for women in law and systematic discrimination based on sex may be built into the law.

‘1’for De jure rights: Women have some of the given rights under law, but these rights are not effectively enforced.

‘2’ for De facto rights: Women have some of the given rights under law, and the government effectively enforces these rights in practice while still allowing a low level of discrimination against women in certain matters.

‘3’for Full Respect: Nearly all of the given women’s human rights are guaranteed by law and the government fully and vigorously enforces these laws in practice.

10Especially concerning the dependent variables, the missing observations are most likely not randomly distributed, as the assessment of human rights is usually not possible in times of unrest, political instability or during total loss of government authority. Following previous research, these periods are, however, usually highly correlated with increased human rights abuses and repression (see Poe et al., 2006; Zanger, 2000). I thus expect the average level of documented respect for womens rights to be slightly higher than the actual value would be. Additionally, countries with a population of less than 500.000 were also excluded from this study (see Gleditsch and Ward, 1999).

11See APPENDIX for full list of countries as well as list of rights included in the three independent variables.

12The fact that the indicators are mixtures of these two different reports makes them more reliable, since they are both said to have slight biases. Whereas US reports tend to have a slight positive bias towards their allies in foreign policy and assigned tougher measures to leftist regimes, AI is said to be slightly biased towards states that disrespect human rights. Both arguments are rooted in the reports’ original purposes: whereas AI started out in documenting human rights abuses in the most repressive countries, the US reports were compiled so as to decide on the scope or denial of US foreign aid to be allocated (see Poe and Tate, 1994)

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4.1.3 Explanatory Variables

Legal Commitment to CEDAW:The main explanatory variable is the ratification of CEDAW, provided by Landman (2005)¹³. The dichotomous variable is assigned 0 in every year a state has not ratified the Convention and 1 for every year it has ratified it¹⁴.

There have been theoretical discussions on whether the actual year of ratification is in fact the ‘turning point’ when governments commence with the full respect of the treatys articles. Some have argued that states, as rational and anticipating actors will adjust their level of compliance prior to the accession (see Neumayer, 2005) while others have employed measures of the years passed since ratification, assuming that with time, the level of compliance will increase in a linear way (e.g. Hathaway, 2002). My statistical model does not intend to detect the improvement of government respect towards women’s rights, as I am not trying to explain this phenomenon. My object of enquiry is the level of compliance that states display after signing the Convention, and whether this level varies across the categories of women’s rights.

Democracy: The configuration of domestic institutions is expected to have an affect on the audience costs and thus on the level of compliance a state will display towards women’s human rights. I have therefore opted for the POLITY2 variable on the degree of procedural democracy a country displays, taken from the Marshall and Jaggers (2006) Polity IV Dataset¹⁵. This indicator defines a country’s regime type on a dimension from

‘strongly democratic’ to ‘strongly autocratic’ focussing entirely on the institutional and procedural dimension.

Influence of Islamic Law and Tradition: Islamic law has proven to have a strong effect on the level of basic human rights granted to women. For example, Islamic family law assigns women a different status than men within a marriage and in many Muslim societies women’s economic value and position is not regarded as being equal to that of men’s (Neumayer and De Soysa, 2007: 1522). The influence of Islamic law is operationalized through the variable MUSLIM, which captures the percentage of Muslims among the population, with data provided by La Porta et al. (1999).

13The variable is available at URL: http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/ todd/interests.htm.

14Landman originally distinguishes three categories: states that have ratified, those that have only signed and those that have not signed the treaty. However, states are only legally obliged to incorporate treaty law into their domestic system, once they have ratified a Convention. For the purpose of this study it is thus only of interest whether a state has ratified or not ratified (i.e. not signed or only signed) a treaty. For this reason I recoded the original dataset to fit this dichotomous character.

15Wherever the original Polity dataset entailed a missing value, I replaced it with the value provided in Gledtisch’s (2007) alternate version of the Polity IV that contains additional estimates that are not in the original Polity IV data. The variable was also recoded to fit a continuous scale from ‘0’ to ‘20’, with the level of democracy rising with the value of the indicator.

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Influence of Catholic Customs and Tradition: The influence of Catholic tradition is operationalized by the variable CATHO that captures the percentage of Catholics among the population, with data provided by La Porta et al. (1999).

4.1.4 Control Variables

Development:¹⁶ The level of economic development is included in order to control for varying levels of women’s rights due to different levels of overall wealth a country displays.

The indicator used measures the per capita gross domestic product (GDP) in 1995 US dollars and is logged so as to account for problems of skewness (LNPCGDP), which would lead to statistical bias (see Kohler and Kreuter, 2005: 226-7).

Globalization: One of the indicators for international interdependence is the extent to which a country is integrated in the global economy. To account for this phenomenon, the logged amount of trade as percentage of the total GDP is used (LNTRADE).

IGOs: The indicator for international governmental organizations IGO is constructed using the data of Pevehouse et al. (2004). For every year, the variable captures the total number of a countrys IGO memberships.

INGOs: The variable indicating the involvement of INGOs in a state draws from the Union of International Associations (UIA) and reflects the number of INGOs that have a registered office in the relevant country. To account for the distributional skewness, the logged value is employed in the statistical model (LNINGOS).

Time trend: To control for possible time trends, I add a variable counting the years since 1981 to my model.

4.2 Statistical Method

The main object of enquiry of this study is the variance in the types of women’s rights.

As the dependent variables used to analyse this phenomenon are of ordinal nature it is not possible to use the conventional ordinary least squares regression (OLS). I will thus estimate my statistical model with the help of an ordered logistic regression (henceforth:

OLOGIT) also known as theproportional odds model.

16If not stated otherwise, the control variables are derived from Landman (2005)

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The ordered logit model

The OLOGIT assumes an underlying latent variable y* which in the case of this study will be the government’s compliance with women’s human rights (see Kohler and Kreuter, 2005: 289). Depending on the specific value of this variable at a given time and place, the value of the coded variables WOPOL will vary (see Long and Freese, 2006: 184-5). The statistical method of using OLOGIT predicts the probability that given an independent variable, such as the ratification of CEDAW, the specific values of y* will be in one of the categories of WOPOL.

The parallel regression assumption

As the nameproportional odds model indicates, OLOGIT builds on an important assumption, often referred to as theparallel regression assumption (PRA). It bases its predictions on the assumption that the explanatory variables have the same effect on every possibility of crossing from one category into the next (i.e. atJ-1 cut-points). To give an example, OLOGIT predicts that the probability of a state changing its level of respect for women’s political rights from ‘no rights’ to‘de jure rights’ is the same as the probability of changing from‘de jure rights’ to‘de facto rights’ once a state has ratified CEDAW. In order to check if this assumption is true I will use the Brant test of parallel regression assumption to compare the probabilities and see if proportional odds are actually given in this case (see Long and Freese, 2006: 452-3)¹⁷.

Dealing with methodological challenges of cross-sectional time-series

The main challenges in using TSCS are problems of autocorrelation and heteroskedasticity (see Beck and Katz, 1995, Wooldridge, 2009: Ch.12). Heteroskedasticity violates the underlying assumption of regression models that the unobserved errors will be independent and normally distributed (Fahrmeir, 2004: 479). The conventional way to deal with this issue is to employ panel-corrected standard errors (PCSE) when using TSCS data (see Beck and Katz, 1995). As the standard mode of employing PCSEs is designed for OLS regression, I cannot rely on this approach. Instead, I make use of robust standard errors that account for the non-independence of observations within the country-clusters.

The second problem I face is autocorrelation¹⁸. I follow previous studies dealing with similar issues (see Hafner-Burton, 2005; Kirschmann and Schneider, 2007) and compute lagged indicators of the countries’ previous womens rights values. However, the use of conventional lagged dependent variables would imply the assumption that state respect for women’s rights was linear. To avoid this generalization, Hafner-Burton includes J-1 binary variables that measure the previous year’s value. My model will thus include three

17Should the assumption be violated, a more elaborate model - the generalized ordered logit model (GOLOGIT2) can be used. For the variables that violated the assumption, the GOLOGIT2 regression relaxes the PRA. I will use this as a robustness check.

18Although the cluster() option in Stata regards the observations within one country as dependent, the temporal dependence of the human rights data is not yet reflected in the statistical model.

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lagged dummy variables that account for the different categories of women’s rights, taking into consideration the temporal dependence without expecting a linear trend.

Multicollinearity

To prevent intercorrelation of the explanatory variables employed in the empirical models, I use the variance inflator test (VIF) to distinguish whether the build of any of the models might be problematic The test reveals a very low correlation between the used variables, which means that the separate effects of the variables are likely to be independent¹⁹.

5 Analysis

5.1 Descriptive Statistics

In order to get a first overview of the dataset, I commence my analysis with descriptive statistics. Tables 1 and 2 report summarising information on the dependent and independent variables. As we can see in Table 1, the political indicator seems to differ more strongly from the social and economic rights, with the most often reported category being the de facto respect women’s rights in the political sphere. Spearman’s correlation²⁰ reveals a particularly high and significant correlation between women’s economic and social rights (.76) whereas the correlation of the socio-economic variables with the political indicator is much lower (both approx .4).

Table1: Descriptive Statistics: Dependent Variables

Dependent Variable Mode 1st Quartile. Median 3rd Quartile Min. Max.

Poiltical Rights 1 1 2 2 0 3

Social Rights 1 1 1 2 0 3

Economic Rights 1 1 1 2 0 3

Note: Number of observations for all variables = 2612.

If we take a closer look at the rights that are grouped in the two indicators (see Ap- pendix Table A1) we understand why this is the case: both include concepts that could be located in either categories. For example, the right to own, acquire, manage and retain property brought into marriage is classified as a social right, whereas classical property rights are usually located in the sphere of economic rights (see Freeman, 2002: Ch. 8).

On the other hand, the freedom to choose a profession or employment without the need to obtain a husband or male relative’s consent counts as an economic right, although this equally affects family and marriage law and could therefore just as well be classified as a social right. For this reason I will focus on the differences between women’s political and

19All values for the VIF test were<2.2.

20Spearman’s correlation is designed for ordinal ranked variables (Fahrmeir, 2007: 142).

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social rights in this descriptive analysis. The WOSOC indicator covers rights that can be classified as both economic and social rights, including a much wider range of issues such as the right to education and the right to equal inheritance and the right to choose a residence; thus I will focus on this variable as approximate for the socio-economic sphere.

The empirical analysis will then take into account all three variables again.

Table 2: Descriptive Statistics: Independent Variables.

Variable N Mean Std. Dev. Min. Max.

CEDAW Ratification 2612 1 .4760 dummy dummy

Democracy 2611 11.124 7.575 0 20

ln p.c. GDP 2414 7.489 1.635 3.9865 10.936

ln Trade (% of GDP) 2427 4.097 .579 .426 5.672

IGO 2601 57.697 19.606 11 129

ln INGOs 2612 5.947 1.160 1.269 8.175

Muslim (%of Pop.) 2555 27.099 37.712 0 100

Catholic (%of Pop.) 2592 29.724 35.679 0 96.9

Time Trend 2612 10.889 5.775 1 20

Median reported for dummy variables, Std. Dev. = standard deviation.

Table 2 reports the summarised statistics for the independent variables that will be employed in the OLOGIT model. As we can see, the median for the CEDAW ratification shows that most of the observations are in years where countries had already ratified the Convention. The number of IGOs a country belongs to accounts for the highest variation, followed by percentage of Muslim and Catholic Population.

In order to get a clearer picture of the general development of women’s political and social rights, Figure 1 provides a temporal overview of the different levels of women’s rights in all countries represented in this study, over time. The images reveal that between 1981 and 2000, approximately one third of these countries grantedno rights to the women who were citizens of their state, neither political nor social. Interestingly, there is no clear time trend visible that would indicate that the respect for women’s rights hasgenerally increased over time. On the contrary, the percentage of countries miss-respecting women’s social rights seems to increase at the beginning of the 1990s, though this effect is most likely due to the formation of new states of the former Soviet Union that weren’t included in the study before. Overall, not many differences can be found between the levels of respect between the two categories. If this general picture does not yield any differences, how does this image change if we only include the members of CEDAW in the presentation? If the next picture shows up differences to the overall situation, it would be a first acknowledgement of an impact by CEDAW on womens rights.

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Figure 1: Level of State Respect of women’s political and social rights

Figure 2 gives the same temporal presentation as in the prior figure, however, this time only states parties to CEDAW are included. There does, indeed, seem to be a strong change in categories, compared with the visual including all countries. Keeping in mind that the rapid changes between the years might reflect new accessions, we are able to draw first deductions. Obviously, the states that joined CEDAW immediately after its legal in- stalment already displayed a basic respect for women’s rights. From the mid 1980s on, it seems that the states parties to CEDAW do not differ too much in their respect of social rights to those that haven’t ratified the Convention. The political rights however, seem to vary considerably in this section. On average it seems, that more countriesde jure orde facto respect political rights if they have ratified CEDAW than if not. Cross-tabulation of the occurrence of different categories of rights with the ratification status reveals that 74.4% of the observations of member states grantde facto political rights to their women, whereas only 46.5% of the non-members do so²¹, which amounts to a difference of 27.9%.

The difference only results in 9.3% in the case of social rights. As expected, the effect is similar for economic rights (11.1%) (see also, Appendix, FigureA1)

21See Appendix, Table A3a-c

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Figure 2: CEDAW members level of Respect for women’s political and social rights First impression gained from the data thus gives credit to the hypothesised relationship between the ratification of CEDAW and state compliance. However, as the literature suggests, there are many factors influencing the status of women in society that could account for the actual variation of the figures. To control for these factors, I will now turn to the regression analysis of my actual statistical model, with the help of ordered logistic regression.

5.2 Empirical Analysis

I will now report on the results of the ordered logistics regression. I start off with the first hypothesis in comparing a basic model of the three types of rights and analysing the effect of CEDAW. I continue with a model specifying the role of democracy if a state is party to the Convention (H2) and again compare the results of political and socio-economic rights.

My next model includes the religious indicators to capture the impact they might have on CEDAWs effectiveness. The last model I present takes account of the wealth of literature on international interdependence, in testing whether these indicators explain the actual or perceived variance between the rights.

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5.2.1 Hypothesis 1: The effect of CEDAW

The basic model I employ to test the effectiveness of CEDAW includes both the democracy indicator and the level of development at which a country finds itself. Table 3 reports the odds ratios for three dependent variables. The ratification of CEDAW obviously has a highly significant impact on the situation of women - a result that contradicts the findings of many studies dealing with the effect of IHRT, as seen in the literature review (e.g.

Hathaway, 2002). The odds of a state that is party to the Convention to be in a higher category of political rights are 3.4 times higher than those of a non-member, holding all other variables constant. The same measurement only accounts to 2.1 times higher odds for social and 1.6 times higher odds for economic rights. The reported results are significant at the 1%-level.

Table 3: Base Model: Variance in the Effect of CEDAW

Political Rights Social Rights Economic Rights coef. odds ratio coef. odds ratio coef. odds ratio

CEDAW Rat. 1.230*** 3.422 0.785*** 2.192 0.490*** 1.632

(0.162) (0.143) (0.155)

Democracy 0.044*** 1.045 0.065*** 1.067 0.045*** 1.046

(0.017) (0.014) (0.0013)

ln p.c. GDP 0.212*** 1.236 0.400*** 1.492 0.380*** 1.463

(0.071) (0.076) (0.077)

Rights(0) t-1 -4.288*** 0.01 -4.170*** 0.015 -3.425*** 0.033

(0.480) (0.308) (0.397)

Rights (1) t-1 -4.124*** 0.02 -2.855*** 0.058 -3.039*** 0.048

(0.014) (0.025) (0.018)

Rights (2) t-1 -1.281 0.28 -0.681** 0.506 0.980*** 2.666

(0.960) (0.292) (0.335)

M cK&Zav.R² 0.731 0.746 0.626

Note: N=2413. coef..coeffiecients. Cut-Points not reported. Robust standard errors in parentheses

* significant at 10%** significant at 5%, *** significant at 1%.

Although being a state party to the Convention generally increases the odds that womens will enjoy a higher respect of their rights, the first hypothesised relationship seems to be confirmed. The CEDAW variable displays the highest coefficient in the case of political rights. The control variables democracy and development have the expected effect, with the level of development being slightly more salient for the socio-economic rights than for political rights, which fits well into the theoretical model. State capacity might be more important for the provision of the so-called ‘second-generation rights’ than for the political rights (cf. Steiner et al., 2008). The corresponding lagged binary variables (that are reported as theRights t-1 variables) are all negative and significant at the 1%-level, except

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for the last category, which is not significant for political rights and positively significant for economic rights. This is most likely due to the fact that the occurrence of the highest category of rights (full respect) is relatively seldom²².

5.2.2 Hypothesis 2: Democracy

The second hypothesised relationship refers to the general assumption that democratic states display higher levels of respect for human rights than non-democracies. To test if this assumption is also found to be true when comparing members to CEDAW, I add a variable to the base model that multiplies the ratification indicator with the level of democracy a country displays.

Table 4 reports the results for the three dependent variables. The addition of this interactive term decreases the coefficient of the ratification variable on political and social slightly, and increases it in a minor way for the economic rights. Analysing the two con- stitutive variables, we can say that if the democracy variable assumes its lowest value (strongly autocratic), the odds ratio of CEDAW is 3.27 for political rights and 1.99 and 1.71 for social and economic rights, which means that the ratification of CEDAW will also make a difference in countries that do not have democratic institutions. If CEDAW is not ratified, the increase of one value on the democracy scale will increase the odds at 1.04 that a state will respect women’s political rights at a higher level, all other factors held constant. Interestingly though, the interactive variable itself does not show a significant result for any of the three types of rights. However, the interpretation of interactive variables is not quite as straightforward. Unfortunately, interactive terms in logit models do not allow for direct interpretation, which means I cannot identify whether the ratification of CEDAW might yield a significant effect from, e.g. a medium democracy level. Nuanced differentiation would be methodologically incorrect. Thus, even though the interactive term is not significant here, the addition of it might still have an important effect on the model (see Brambor et al., 2006: 74).

22This means that the last lagged dummy only assumes the value ‘1’ very seldom, and by consequence, also decreases the odds that a state will respect women’s rights in the highest category, even if it did so in the previous year. See Appendix, Tables A3a-c

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Table 4: Democracy

Political Rights Social Rights Economic Rights coef. odds ratio coef. odds ratio coef. odds ratio

CEDAW Rat. 1.18*** 3.27 0.690** 1.993 0.539* 1.714

(0.27) (0.309) (0.283)

Democracy 0.041** 1.04 0.061*** 1.063 0.047** 1.048

(0.02) (0.020) (0.018)

lnp.c. GDP 0.210*** 1.23 0.397*** 1.488 0.382*** 1.466

(0.07) (0.077) (0.077)

Democ.*Rat. 0.005 1.00 0.008 1.008 -0.004 0.996

(0.022) (0.020) (0.019)

M cK&Zav.R² 0.731 0.746 0.626

Note: N=2413. coef..coeffiecients, Robust standard errors in parentheses Lagged Binary Variables not reported. Cut-Points not reported.

* significant at 10%** significant at 5%, *** significant at 1%.

5.2.3 Hypothesis 3: Religion

To test the next Hypothesis, I add the religious variables MUSLIM and CATHO to the base model. Also, a time trend variable YEAR0 is included, so as to test whether a general trend of increasing or decreasing values can be detected. Table 5 reports the results of the three types of rights alongside each other, so as to facilitate the comparison. The first noteworthy change detected is the loss of explanation-power experienced by the democracy variable in the case of political rights. Obviously, the additional variables now account for the variation that was previously explained by the level democratic domestic institutions a state provided. The percentage of Muslims in a country’s population has a negative effect on the respect of women’s rights, which is significant at the 1%-level across all three types of rights. Apparently, the influence of Muslim law and tradition constrains compliance with women’s rights. The model predicts that, for example, the odds that a state with 51% Muslims will respect women’s economic rights at a higher level that a country with 50% Muslim population is 0.991. An increase in Muslim or Catholic population in a country decreases the odds that a state will respect women’s rights adequately. The indicator for the percentage of Catholics has a negative influence and is highly significant (1%-level) for political rights but reports no noticeable impact on either social or economic rights. The similarity in results between social and economic rights is most likely due to the above-mentioned overlapping definitions of their indicators. Hypothesis 3 is therefore partly confirmed, with the Muslim variable displaying significant negative influence on all three types, whereas the Catholic one seems to only affect womens political rights. Lastly, I turn to the time trend variable employed in the model. It is significant at the 1%-level

The Cost of Compliance : The effect of the convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women (CEDAW) on the situation of women's political, social and economic human rights