THE IMPACT OF FEMALE POLITICAL EMPOWERMENT ON ECONOMIC GENDER EQUITY IN THE BLACK SEA REGION COUNTRIES

Abstract

The article reveals the interplay between economic opportunity and participation gender equity and female political empowerment for Black Sea Region countries, namely, Bulgaria, Georgia, Moldova, Russia, Turkey, and Ukraine. We analyzed the impact of the following indicators, ratios of females with seats in parliament over male value, females at ministerial level over male value, and number of years with a female head of state (last 50 years) over male value. We verified our hypothesis that three key factors are significant for economic opportunity and participation index of the abovementioned countries. We took the level of significance, t-statistic probability of 5 percent, so that, if α < 0,05, then our hypothesis is correct. Our hypothesis was proved only for Moldova concerning the influence of the ratio of females at ministerial level over male value on economic opportunity and participation. Our calculations showed that changes in economic gender equity are explained by changes in ratio of females and males at ministerial positions by 66.64 percent. There is a positive correlation between these two variables, so that the maximum theoretical level of economic gender equity could be 0,9 due to the high starting point. Our results indicated that females currently are not able to transform their growing political influence into economic gains, therefore, investigations of methods of converting female political emancipation into economic gender equity become topical.