Reducing Gender-Discrimination World Wide: What Works and Why. The Global Spread and (Unintended) Impact of Labor Legislation and Social Movements

• Applicant: Dr. Miriam Abu Sharkh
• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research
• Term: from 2004 to 2009
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 5438159

The proposal seeks to apply the world society and social movement paradigms to study gender discrimination in the labor market in a globalizing world. The purpose is both to widen the scope of gender studies and to advance the world society and social movement theories. Research in line with the world society paradigm has been criticized for not examining whether transnational norms are implemented and yield the desired outcomes. lt has also paid scant attention to gender issues in the labor market. Both limitations will be addressed in the proposed research project. The questions the research thereby asks are four. (1) Which types of nations ratify the antidiscrimination conventions of the International Labour Organization? (2) Does ratification prompt the implementation of anti-discrimination legislation into national Iaw? (3) Under which conditions does such ratification and national legislation impact women's labor market status? (4) What are the interaction and feedback effects of these processes an poverty, inequality and democratization? These questions will be addressed in a quantitative study with comparative, longitudinal data for all nation states through the modern post-World War II period. The quantitative results will be followed up by qualitative case studies in phase II.

• DFG Programme: Emmy Noether International Fellowships