The Appointment of Men as Representatives to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women

Abstract

The United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) was one of the first international bodies devoted to gender issues and has played a foundational role in the promotion of gender equality globally. In this article, I explore representational patterns at the CSW and question when and why states choose to send men representatives. Novel data shows that while the commission was composed entirely of women representatives in its early decades, men’s representation has steadily increased—reaching parity in 2000. This paper argues that appointment choice can be explained by domestic levels of women’s political empowerment. The empirical results demonstrate a non-linear relationship between women’s political empowerment and appointment. States with higher levels of women’s political empowerment are more likely to appoint women representatives, until a threshold. At the highest levels of empowerment, states become again more likely to appoint men. I argue that this reflects a positive trend, in which men are taking a more active role in deconstructing pervasive gender inequalities. This paper has relevant implications for understandings of women’s representation in international institutions.