The Heterogeneous Impacts of the Ratification of CEDAW on the Adoption of Violence Against Women Laws

Abstract

Even though previous literature on the impacts of the ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) has broadened our understanding of the conducive influences of CEDAW on women’s rights, the impacts of the ratification of CEDAW on the adoption of women’s rights laws, especially violence against women laws, based on a diffusion mechanism have not been empirically examined. Also, the heterogeneous impacts of the ratification of CEDAW on the diffusion of violence against women laws by types of violence which such laws aim to penalize has not been academically unveiled. With unprecedentedly large time-series cross-national data on 129 countries from 1908 to 2016, this article estimating pooled event history models (PEHM) with a directed dyadic setup demonstrates that the ratification of CEDAW increases the probability of adopting violence against women laws of other countries substantially. In addition, the empirical results show that the conducive influence is conspicuous related to the diffusion of laws about sexual harassment, and domestic and intimate partner violence, while the probability of adopting laws not specifying certain forms of violence against women tends to decrease with the ratification of CEDAW. Those empirical results are robust and consistent in different model specifications.