WOMEN´S POLITICAL EMPOWERMENT AND LOWERED SOCIO-ECONOMIC BARRIERS UNDER THE CONTEXT OF CORRUPTION. A quantitative cross-country study of the effect of women´s political empowerment on socio-economic barriers moderated by corruption

Abstract: This thesis theorizes that higher levels of women’s political empowerment (WPE) lower socio-economic barriers to development across countries and that this is moderated by countries’ level of corruption. Using cross-sectional data from more than 100 transitioning and developing countries from 2009 and 2014 this thesis develops upon the results of previous research on WPE and poverty reduction under different contexts by extending the analysis to include a measurement of political empowerment including both empowerment in official political positions, formal empowerment, and as political empowerment of ordinary citizens in civil society, informal empowerment. Level of corruption is further examined as a variable that potentially moderates the expected negative relationship between WPE and socio-economic barriers. However, the thesis fails to provide robust evidence for either the negative relationship between WPE and socio-economic barriers, or the moderating effect of corruption. Instead, the main results of this thesis are that corruption does not have a moderating effect on the relationship between WPE and socio-economic barriers, and that other aspects, technological change in particular, seemingly matter more for the variance made in socio-economic barriers than WPE.