Gender differences in political interest in South and Southeast Asia

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Numerous socioeconomic variables, including educational attainment and labor force participation, have witnessed a decline in gender disparities in recent decades. According to numerous international research studies and surveys, women appear to be less politically active and less interested than men. In this context, women in Asia have traditionally been underrepresented in politics, home, economics, and society. Therefore, this study aims to observe gender disproportion in South and Southeast Asia, generate comparative data, and test existing theories. This study utilizes data from the seventh phase of the World Values Survey (WVS) for Myanmar, Bangladesh, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines. This paper is different from previous research in that it measures political interest, contentment with democracy, and non-institutionalized involvement in a greater number of nations. Quantitative techniques were used to gather and analyze data, such as descriptive analysis and regression. The OLS regression was used to find the relationship between political interest and other independent variables, and the multi-Level regression model was used to predict the political interest by gender in terms of country level democracy. The results of this study also show that socioeconomic factors and other country-level variables, like the Human Development Index, the Gross Domestic Product, and the number of women in parliament, don't have a big effect on the rise of women's interest in politics. Given these facts, this study suggests the level of liberal democracy, not resources or a patriarchal society, is the leading cause for the gender differences in political interest in South and Southeast Asia.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• i Abstract 4
• ii Acknowledgement 5
• I Introduction 8
• 1.1. Statement of the Problem 8
• 1.2. Significance of the Study 11
• 1.3. Conceptual Framework 12
• 1.4.Contribution of the Study 15
• 1.5.Research Questions 16
• 1.6. Overview of the structure 16
• II Literature Review 17
• 2.1. Gender Gap in Political Interest 17
• 2.2. Individual-level Factors 20
• 2.3. Country-level Factors 21
• 2.4. Hypothesis 23
• 2.5. Summary 23
• III Methodology 24
• 3.1. Data and Sample 24
• 3.2. Measure 25
• 3.2.1 Dependent Variable 25
• 3.2.2 Key Independent Variables 26
• 3.2.3 Country-level Variables 28
• 3.3 Analytic Plan 29
• 3.4. Model Specification 30
• IV Findings and Discussion 31
• 4.1. Descriptive Statistics 31
• 4.2. Discussion of Trends for Country-level Variables by Country 34
• 4.3. Regression Result 40
• V Conclusion and Recommendation 50
• References 52
• Appendices 60