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FINNUT-Forskning og innovasjon i utdanningssektoren

Redefining the Public Sphere: Education Reforms and the Inclusion of Women in Public Participation (REPS)

Alternative title: Den offentlige sfære omdefinert: Utdanningsreformer og inkluderingen av kvinner i det offentlige liv

Awarded: NOK 8.0 mill.

Women’s inclusion in the public sphere – first as activists and voters and later as political candidates, policymakers, and organizational leaders – sets the 20th century apart from the previous ones. The REPS project studies how political institutions and public policies can promote women’s public participation – and how their involvement again influences politics and policy. By collecting, systematizing, digitizing, and analyzing unique Norwegian and global data, REPS contributes new knowledge on the causes and consequences of how women gained increased access to politics, policymaking, and prestigious labor market positions. In this effort, we pay particular attention to the two-way relationship between education reforms and gender parity in the public sphere in Norway. REPS may help to pinpoint how we achieve a fairer distribution of power, positions, and privileges between the genders. The first gender revolution was the enfranchisement of women. Across Western countries, the share of adult citizens eligible to vote increased from 43% in 1900 to 80% in 1930. Women’s suffrage organizations were vital in the quest for enfranchisement. Yet we have surprisingly little systematic evidence about who the suffragists were and what induced them to mobilize for suffrage. REPS, therefore, examines whether the large-scale entrance of women into the teaching profession created an occupational class of women with both the resources for and interests in mobilization for the right to vote. This ongoing study – which also collects and digitizes historical data on education reforms and women’s political activism – thus addresses the crucial question of how mobilization to enfranchise half of the adult population was driven forward. In other studies, REPS analyzes how women activists and education influenced Members of Parliament to pass suffrage reforms. The importance of education and women’s political activism in redefining politics and the public sphere did not stop with the demand for suffrage. REPS, therefore, also analyzes how enfranchising women subsequently changed the political landscape, political participation, policymaking, and the wider public sphere in a more gender-equal direction. In ongoing works, we study how the enfranchisement of women influenced party competition and the passing of policies that women had a particular interest in (such as further education and electoral system reforms) and how women’s activism and institutional reforms influenced women’s formal political participation. Together, these studies create a more coherent understanding of how education reforms, women’s activism, suffrage reforms, parties, and political participation and representation shaped each other to produce a more gender-equal public sphere. Despite women’s activism and achieving equal political rights, social norms and opportunities were still stacked against women becoming political candidates, policymakers, organizational leaders, and avoiding harassment. Women remained severely underrepresented in these powerful positions. Indeed, the second gender revolution – which would close the gender gap in higher education and bring many women onto party lists and into political and civil offices – had to await the late 1960s in Norway and other advanced democracies. To further understand women’s inclusion in influential public positions, REPS also investigates this second revolution. The project studies how education reforms may give women the resources and experience needed to stand for election and acquire leadership positions in politics and the labor market. We also investigate gender inequalities in access to prominent societal positions among highly educated women and men, including chairing policy commissions and leading enterprises. Results from these studies suggest that although education reforms may improve gender equality, additional institutional reforms, especially gender quotas and transparency reforms, may be needed to push access to high-powered positions closer toward gender parity. REPS aims to advance our understanding of the turning points in women’s inclusion in the public sphere. As stark gender differences in access to powerful public positions persist across the globe, insights from REPS will hopefully help provide policymakers with a better understanding of how to promote gender equality in the public sphere. Studies linked to the REPS project are made publicly available at www.skorge.info/reps. REPS collects and digitizes various historical sources from Norway on women’s participation in the public sphere and education, which will be available upon completion. These include historical education statistics (at the municipality level), women’s membership in suffrage organizations (individual level), party seat shares and women candidates and representatives in municipal councils, women book authors (individual level), and suffrage and secession petitions (individual and municipality level).

The inclusion of women in the public sphere separates the last century from the previous ones. The first gender revolution was the enfranchisement of women. The existing literature suggest that suffrage reforms succeeded due to a combination of women’s activism and weak incumbents looking for voters to shore up their position. The level of women’s activism has, nevertheless, either been assumed to mirror economic development or been taken as exogenously given, which leaves us with only a partial explanation of women’s mobilization for enfranchisement and suffrage reforms. The first question this project addresses is thus how women’s large-scale entrance into the teaching profession fueled political mobilization for suffrage. Despite achieving equal rights to vote and stand for election, cultural norms were stacked against women replacing men as political candidates and civil servants. The second revolution, which brought women into political and civil offices, had to await the late 1960s. A vast literature on women’s descriptive political representation documents how it especially correlates with socioeconomic development and electoral institutions. Still, moving beyond macro associations to better understand the supply of female candidates have been hampered by a lack of detailed individual-level data on legislators over time. The second question this project asks is hence how higher education reforms enabled many more women to obtain the resources and skills needed to stand for election. To study these questions, the project makes use of causal inference techniques that exploits regional and temporal variation in several Norwegian education reforms in the 19th and 20th century. Coupled unique data on women’s inclusion in the public sphere as activists, voters, political candidates, and civil servants across more than a century, the project will provide the most detailed assessment the of link between education and gender inequality hitherto in the literature.

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FINNUT-Forskning og innovasjon i utdanningssektoren