THE EFFECT OF COUNTRIES’ DEMOCRACY LEVELS ON THE GLOBAL GENDER GAP: A STUDY ON OECD COUNTRIES

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of countries’ democracy levels on the global gender gap. In this context, the Democracy Index prepared by the Economist Intelligence Unit that assesses the quality of democracy in a country and the Global Gender Gap Index published by the World Economic Forum were used to study the given relation. Moreover, the Human Development Index and the Gross Domestic Product were added as independent variables in order to increase the explanatory power of the regression model that examines the effect of the Democracy Index on the Global Gender Gap Index. The sample of the study consists of the OECD countries and the panel data set obtained for these countries covering the years between 2006 and 2018 was tested by regression analysis. As a result, it is concluded that the Democracy Index affects the Global Gender Gap Index negatively while the Human Development Index and the Gross Domestic Product affect the Global Gender Gap Index positively.