Gender scholars have found that democratization is rarely associated with advances in women’s rights and offer a range of reasons why. This article offers a new explanation that targets the quality of democracy in the leading institutions in the public sphere. The author argues that open and inclusive debate conditions, or women’s access, voice, and capacity for contestation in the legislature, civil society, and the media, enable them to shape debate content and pressure the state to respond with legislative reform. The author tests this claim through a structured, focused comparison of Chile and South Africa during the period prior to the transition to democracy, when the public sphere expanded and debate conditions were dynamic. The author finds that different levels of openness and inclusiveness coincide with different outcomes in women’s rights. This suggests that the quality of democracy in the public sphere shapes women’s rights and that it may shape the outcomes of rights for other marginalized groups and in long-standing democracies as well.
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