The Women’s Legal Rights Index: A New Approach to Measuring Women’s Autonomy

Existing indicators of women’s empowerment focus on women’s educational attainment. Yet theories of women’s empowerment in politics, in particular their role in democratization, extend beyond the consequences of education to require agency and autonomy in their lives. In the first chapter of this dissertation, I argue that in an effort to measure women’s citizenship and standing in their respective societies, access to legal rights should be measured and considered. My theoretical framework builds on literature that demonstrates that while education is critical to women’s prosperity in many facets of life, other measures related to their legal rights can provide a deeper understanding of their level of autonomy and substantive equality. In the second chapter, I create an index that measures women’s equality and citizenship based on the aggregation of a set of legal rights. The Women’s Legal Rights Index is made up of fundamental legal rights through which women gain independence, make individual life-changing choices and the ability for social, political and economic mobility without being dependent on men but through guarantees by the state. The Women’s Legal Rights Index is made up of 10 variables for which data is collected and computed to generate an index for 18 Middle East and North African (MENA) countries. I then correlate the Women’s Legal Rights Index with the Gender Inequality Index (GII) to determine the substantive level of agency and autonomy women have in MENA, showing that this new measure provides explanatory power. In the third and final chapter, I use the Women’s Legal Rights Index to showcase that high levels of education and access to the labor market in Iran and Tunisia produce different results for women. Both countries prioritize education for their population. Both have low mortality rates, and both provide women with access to the labor force. Their universities are made up of mostly women students – around 60 percent in both countries – and yet the lives of women in both non-democratic nations look very different. Women in Tunisia are considerably empowered through legal rights that are guaranteed through the constitution and numerous laws that took place decades ago and were strengthened overtime through various governments and legislations. Meanwhile, despite their long-standing educational achievements, women in Iran have little agency and independence. In comparing Tunisia and Iran, I make the case that measuring women’s autonomy and independence must include their access to legal rights and that substantive change is realized through the law. My dissertation contributes theoretically and empirically to the literature by providing an additional mechanism of measuring women’s autonomy and empowerment.