[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"doc-detail-113243-en":3,"doc-seo-113243-105":29,"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":91},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",{"doc_id":7,"user_id":8,"nickname":9,"user_avatar":10,"doc_module":4,"category_id":11,"category_name":12,"doc_title":13,"doc_description":14,"doc_content":15,"file_id":16,"file_url":17,"file_type":18,"file_size":19,"view_count":20,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":20,"is_downloadable":20,"audit_status":20,"page_count":21,"language":22,"language_code":23,"site_id":24,"html_lang":23,"table_of_contents":25,"faqs":26,"seo_title":13,"seo_description":14,"update_tm":27,"read_time":28},113243,5909877438554,"Maeve","https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/avatar/5600025385ad2bf12a7?_k=1778553567797529272",8,"Research & Report","Women Legislators in Africa and Foreign Aid","Women’s representation in African legislatures has risen markedly, creating a puzzle because it does not align with an electorate’s stated preferences for gender equality and women in political leadership. Over the past two decades, international donors have instead elevated gender equality and women’s empowerment as funding priorities. This study tests whether women’s legislative representation is linked to foreign-aid allocations.","Pub lic Disclosure Authorized Pub lic Disclosure Authorized  \nThe World Bank Economic Review, 37(1), 2023, 1–23  \n[https://doi.org10.1093/wber/lhac027](https://doi.org10.1093/wber/lhac027)  \nArticle  \nWomen Legislators in Africa and Foreign Aid Kurt Annen and Henrietta A. Asiamah   \nAbstract  \nThere has been a significant rise in the share of women legislators in Africa. What makes this fact puzzling is that it cannot be attributed to an African electorate that values gender equality and having women in political leadership positions. In stark contrast to this, gender equality and women’s empowerment have successively moved up in the priority list of the international donor community over the last two decades. This raises the question of whether there is a relationship between women legislators in Africa and foreign-aid allocations. This study finds a strong and statistically robust relationship: an increase in the share of women legislators from 15 to 20 percent is associated with an increase of about 4 percent in aid conditional on current levels of aid. Additionally, the study finds that democratic countries receive more aid but does not find an interaction effect between democracy and the share of women legislators, which suggests that donors do not tailor their genderselective aid towards more democratic countries. The results provide evidence in support of aid selectivity for policies that improve gender equality in aid-recipient countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.  \nJEL classification: F35, F50, O10, O19  \nKeywords: foreign-aid allocations, women members of parliament, reserved seats, aid selectivity  \n1. Introduction  \nThe Chamber of Deputies in Rwanda, which is currently made up of over 60 percent of women, has been the national parliament with the highest share of women legislators worldwide for over ten years now. Many national parliaments in Africa have a share of women legislators that is substantially above the world average, such as Senegal (43 percent), South Africa (41 percent), Mozambique (39 percent),  \nKurt Annen is a professor at the University of Guelph, Guelph, Canada, N1G 2W1; his email address [is kannen@uoguelph.ca](is kannen@uoguelph.ca). Henrietta A. Asiamah (corresponding author) is an economist at Statistics Canada, 150 Tunney’s Pasture Driveway, Ottawa, Canada; her email address is henrietta.asiamah@statcan.gc.ca. The research for this article was financed by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council in Canada (Grant No. 430500) and the Swiss National Science Foundation (Grant No. IZSEZ0_ 183964) . The authors would like to thank participants at the World Bank Africa Fellowship BBL Series (Washington DC, 2022), the annual meeting of the European Public Choice Society in Braga (2022), the Department Seminar Series (University of Guelph, 2021), and the Canadian Economics Association Annual Meetings (2021) for valuable comments and suggestions. The authors also thank Andy Richardson and Hiroko Yamaguchi from the Interparliamentary Union in Geneva for providing us with a complete set of election data files from their institution. The authors would also like to thank Anna Minasyan, Johanna Goertz, Justice Tei Mensah, Louise Grogan, Mike Hoy, Miriam Kautz, Moussa Blimpo, Myra Yazbeck, Thanasis Stengos, Simon Hug, Woubet Kassa, the editor, and three anonymous referees for their insightful comments. A supplementary online appendix is available with this article at The World Bank Economic Review website.  \n© The Author(s) 2023 . Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / THE WORLD BANK.  \nAll rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [journals.permissions@oup.com](journals.permissions@oup.com)  \nDownloaded from [https://academic.oup.com/wber/article/37/1/1/6967293 by International Monetary Fund / World Bank-IMF user on](https://academic.oup.com/wber/article/37/1/1/6967293 by International Monetary Fund / World Bank-IMF user o","cbCaitK0yOsykewn","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaitK0yOsykewn","pdf",477607,1,23,"English","en",105,"# Abstract\n# Introduction","[{\"question\":\"What puzzle does the paper address regarding women’s representation in Africa?\",\"answer\":\"The rise in women’s share of legislators is not explained by African voters’ stated valuation of gender equality and women’s political leadership. 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Yet donor priorities have increasingly focused on gender equality over the last two decades.","Answer",{"name":78,"@type":73,"acceptedAnswer":79},"What is the main finding about the relationship between women legislators and foreign aid?",{"text":80,"@type":76},"An increase in the share of women legislators from 15% to 20% is associated with about a 4% increase in aid, conditional on current aid levels.",{"name":82,"@type":73,"acceptedAnswer":83},"Does the study find evidence that donors tailor aid to more democratic countries?",{"text":84,"@type":76},"The study finds that democratic countries receive more aid, but it does not find an interaction effect between democracy and the share of women legislators. 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