Do Political rights (FH) and Women's political empowerment go together across countries?

Across 168 countries the link before adjusting for anything is r = -0.78, on a scale from -1 (opposite) to +1 (in step). A version that uses only each country's rank gives -0.83.

Does the link hold within countries over time, not just across countries?

Comparing each country only with itself across 1990-2025, and setting aside what happened worldwide in each year, the link is -0.358 (175 countries, 6,185 country-years). Using year-to-year changes, it is -0.197.

Does Political rights (FH) cause Women's political empowerment?

This analysis cannot answer that. It shows only that the two go together. A link between two country measures, adjusted or not, does not show that either one changes the other. Country figures also say nothing about individual people.

Political rights (FH) vs. Women's political empowerment

Holds up after adjusting for income

Across 168 countries, Political rights (FH) and Women's political empowerment rise and fall together at r = -0.78 (on a scale from −1 to +1, where 0 means no link). It holds up almost unchanged when only countries with similar income (GDP per person) are compared (r = -0.72, q = 0.025, allowing for the many pairs tested).

Comparing countries across the middle half of political rights (fh), 2 to 6 points, women's political empowerment is worse by 0.246 points at the top of that range than the bottom. Comparing only countries with similar national income, the gap is 0.234 points.

Link before adjusting (r)-0.778p = 2.8e-35 · 168 countries

After adjusting for national income-0.716p = 1.6e-27 · likely range [-0.78, -0.63]

p, allowing for regions0.001standard error 0.129 · 7 regions

Check for luck (q)0.025across 12,497 pairs

How to read these.r runs from −1 (one goes up as the other goes down) to +1 (they rise together), and 0 means no link. Adjusting for national income means comparing countries with the same GDP per person, so differences in wealth can’t explain the link. Income is used in percentage terms, since an extra $1,000 means more to a poor country than to a rich one. p is how likely a link this strong would be if there were really none. Below 0.05 means it is unlikely to be chance. Very small values are written in short form: 1.1e-32 means a decimal point followed by 31 zeros and then 11, so very close to zero. The likely range is where the true figure probably lies, and a range that crosses zero means the link could easily be chance. Countries in the same region tend to resemble each other, so the third figure allows for that, which gives a fairer p. The standard error is the typical size of the error in r. Finally, testing this many pairs means some will look strong by luck alone. A q below 0.05 means this link is unlikely to be one of those.

Political rights (FH) · rating (1-7, 1 = most free)link with income -0.48 · moderate

Women's political empowerment · index (0-1)link with income +0.54 · moderate

“Link with income” is how closely each measure tracks GDP per person across countries, from −1 to +1.

Every country as a dot

best-fit line line after adjusting

Four ways to measure the link

Method	r	p	Countries
Standard (Pearson), not adjusted	-0.778	2.8e-35	168
By rank (Spearman), not adjusted	-0.826	4.0e-43	168
Standard (Pearson), adjusted for national income	-0.716	1.6e-27	168
By rank (Spearman), adjusted for national income	-0.756	3.7e-32	168

The rank version uses only each country’s place in line, from lowest to highest, so a few extreme countries count for less. The adjusted and unadjusted versions use the same 168 countries: those that report both measures and GDP per person. So the gap between them comes from the adjustment, not from a change in which countries are counted. Drop in the size of r after adjusting: +0.062 (a minus sign means it grew).

How solid is it?

Leaving out one country at a time, r ranges from -0.732 (without AFG) to -0.705 (without SAU). The bar above shows that range on a scale from −1 to +1, with the solid line at the full result. The single country that moves r most: AFG (-0.016).

Within each region

Countries are not separate, unrelated cases, and neighbors share a lot. A link that holds inside each region is far more believable than one that shows up only when comparing regions.

	n	r
East Asia & Pacific	21	-0.72
Europe & Central Asia	49	-0.78
Latin America & Caribbean	23	-0.85
Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan & Pakistan	21	-0.69
Sub-Saharan Africa	46	-0.63

By income third

If the link shows up only in the richest third of countries, it is a feature of rich countries, not a general pattern.

	n	r
Poorest third	56	-0.61
Middle third	56	-0.67
Richest third	56	-0.87

By largest religious group

Countries grouped by a label they share, such as main religion, rather than by a number. Groups of fewer than twelve countries are not shown. These groups differ in income, region and history all at once. So a gap between them is a place to start asking questions, not an answer.

	n	r
Christians	99	-0.67
Muslims	48	-0.57

By last european coloniser

	n	r
France	25	-0.46
Never a European colony	21	-0.67
Spain	19	-0.91
United Kingdom	49	-0.77

Without outliers (countries far outside the middle half of countries on either measure, by more than one and a half times the width of that middle half): r = -0.737 after dropping 2 countries.

Two series, one country

Both measures over the years for one country you pick. The two charts are stacked so they share only the years along the bottom.

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Over time, within countries

Everything above compares countries with each other at one moment. This section compares each country only with itself over 36years. So a link here can’t come from anything about a country that stays the same, such as its history, geography, institutions or culture.

The link also shows up within countries over time (r = -0.358). It holds even when looking only at changes from one year to the next (r = -0.197). This is the strongest kind of evidence available here: it holds when each country is compared only with itself, and it is not just a product of shared trends.

Across countries (adjusted)-0.716for comparison

Within countries-0.322each country vs itself

…and vs the same year elsewhere-0.358q = 0.000 · 175 countries

Year-on-year changes-0.197q = 0.000

6,185 country-years (one country in one year), 175 countries, 1990–2025, about 35 years each on average. Share of the variation that happens within countries over time: 14% for Political rights (FH), 13% for Women's political empowerment. The margins of error allow for each country appearing many times, and for each year’s value being close to the year before.

Year-to-year changes are a cautious test, not a final answer. Looking only at changes from one year to the next removes each country’s own trends. But it also makes measurement mistakes louder, which pulls the results toward zero. A near-zero result here is weak evidence of no link, not proof.

With one measure years behind the other

Same year (lag 0): -0.358. A peak away from zero does not show which comes first. These series change slowly — this year’s value is close to last year’s. That makes the curve smooth and nearly symmetric, whatever produced the data. Even a sharp peak at one lag (a gap of some years) would not prove that one measure changes the other.

The data

	rating (1-7, 1 = most free)	index (0-1)	Years
Viet Nam VNM	7	0.808	2025
Uzbekistan UZB	7	0.643	2025
Turkmenistan TKM	7	0.437	2025
Tajikistan TJK	7	0.431	2025
Chad TCD	7	0.625	2025
Syrian Arab Republic SYR	7	0.29	2025
Eswatini SWZ	7	0.391	2025
Somalia, Fed. Rep. SOM	7	0.337	2025
Sudan SDN	7	0.219	2025
Saudi Arabia SAU	7	0.347	2025
Russian Federation RUS	7	0.546	2025
Nicaragua NIC	7	0.531	2025
Niger NER	7	0.709	2025
Myanmar MMR	7	0.33	2025
Mali MLI	7	0.706	2025

Freedom House, Freedom in the World
Coppedge, M. et al., V-Dem Dataset, Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project

Sources

Political rights (FH)

Political rights rating

Freedom House · via Our World in Data · Free to use with attribution · updated annual

Scored 1 to 7, where 1 is most free. That is the reverse of most measures on this site. Covers elections, the freedom to form competing parties, and how government works. Freedom House changed its method in 2003, adding scores for smaller categories. But the 1-7 ratings are still the published series that runs through all the years.

Women's political empowerment

Women's political empowerment index

V-Dem Institute, University of Gothenburg · via Our World in Data · CC BY 4.0 · updated annual

Women's civil liberties, their part in civic groups, and their political representation. It is built from its own set of questions, not from the parts of the democracy indices, so it is not tagged as measuring the same thing. Still, read its links with them carefully. Whether women take part in politics is partly built into whether real political participation exists at all. So a strong link with general democracy measures is closer to definitional (true by how the terms are defined) than to a finding about the world.

How this was computed

Data used: most recent value in 2010-2025; values come from 2025. To adjust for income, each measure is first predicted from GDP per person (in percentage terms, on a log scale) with a straight-line fit. Only what is left over is then compared. This is called a partial correlation. The line is drawn the standard way (ordinary least squares), which picks the line that comes closest to all the countries at once. The error margins allow for countries in the same region resembling each other, using 7 World Bank regions. The q-value corrects for testing all 12,497 pairs at once, using the Benjamini–Hochberg method. Underlying data last updated DYB 2024. How the country data works · explore Political rights (FH) and Women's political empowerment

This page shows that two measures go together. It does not show that Political rights (FH) changes Women's political empowerment, or the reverse. These figures also describe countries, not individual people. See the ecological fallacy.