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Genocide and the Gender Gap in Political Representation

What are the legacies of violence on gendered patterns of political representation? We examine the long-term effects of a watershed conflict of the twentieth century: the Khmer Rouge genocide, during which 50–70% of Cambodia’s working-age men were killed. Using original data on mass killings and economic and political conditions in Cambodian communes, we find that genocide exposure is positively associated with women’s economic advancement and present-day indicators of women’s representation in local-level elected office. We conduct in-depth, ethnographic interviews with genocide survivors to explore the mechanisms by which violence spurred women into elected office. A crucial finding emerges: In areas that suffered the genocide’s worst killings, widows obtained economic autonomy, providing a template for the economic advancement of women in households maintaining conventional gender roles. The shift in norms regarding the sexual division of labor created intra-communal and intergenerational pathways by which women adopted larger public roles over time.