- ▸ Between Elite Strategy and Mass Mobilization: Women’s Political Empowerment in Anti-Colonial Social Revolutions
Why do some social revolutions advance women’s political empowerment while others do not? Scholars widely recognize that conflict can open windows of opportunity for gender equality, yet the ways in which different types of revolutions influence these outcomes remain underexplored. I argue that anticolonial social revolutions are more likely to expand women’s political empowerment than revolutions aimed at domestic redistribution or regime change, because they require broad-based mobilization against a foreign power, prompting revolutionary leaders to articulate inclusive visions of liberation that transcend class and gender divisions. These ideological commitments become institutionalized through mass organizations that link women to the new state, embedding equality within the regime’s legitimacy and state-building project. In contrast, revolutions confronting domestic elites can rely on narrower, class-based coalitions, resulting in symbolic rather than substantive gender reforms. To test this theory, I leverage the global temporal and spatial variation in revolutions since 1900, employing a difference-in-differences design to show that women’s political empowerment increases most sharply following anticolonial social revolutions. A complementary analysis of the 1959 Cuban Revolution illustrates how the regime intertwined women’s emancipation with the revolution’s legitimacy and curtailed opposition to egalitarian reform. The findings underscore how broad-based mobilization can generate mechanisms of accountability, even within authoritarian regimes. Contact for working paper.
- ▸ The Paradox of Protection: Gender-based Violence and Claim-making Under Criminal Rule (with Isabella Caro Montini)
This project assesses the impact of specialized judicial institutions on women's claim-making behavior across two major metropolitan areas in Latin America: the states of Mexico and São Paulo, both marked by strong criminal group presence and uneven state provision. Using a survey experiment informed by extensive fieldwork, the research examines how women in these settings choose to report gendered crimes, whether to formal authorities (e.g., police), criminal organizations, or non-governmental organizations, in municipalities with varying levels of state presence and judicial specialization. Contact for working paper.
- ▸ Marching for Change: Quantifying the Effects of Women’s Rights Protests on Legislation and Femicide in Latin America (with Lily Medina Jara)
Do protests against violence toward women help reduce it, or do they exacerbate it? Over the past 20 years, mass demonstrations with feminist causes have dramatically increased across the region. These movements have advocated for critical legislative changes, including the legalization of abortion and the recognition of femicide as a distinct criminal offense. But how effective are these protests? We analyze their impact both on legislation and on (actual) violence against women. Using an instrumental variable, we provide the first cross-country evaluation of the effects of protest agenda-seeding on femicide and whether these protests directly influence legislation criminalizing violence against women. This research contributes to the growing body of literature on gendered social movements and policy change, offering insights into how grassroots activism can influence both legal frameworks and societal behavior. Contact for working paper.
- ▸ Rights Talk: Activists and Governments at the UN Human Rights Council (with Leonardo Arriola and Fiona Shen-Bayh)
Do activists from countries governed by authoritarian regimes alter how they communicate with the international community? We examine how domestic nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) operating under authoritarian regimes strategically adapt their use of language regarding the types of rights-based claims they raise. To assess this expectation, we draw on activist statements made through the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) instituted by the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC). For every UPR cycle, the UNHRC receives thousands of document submissions from activists worldwide. Through text-analysis and topic modeling of over 500 documents submitted between 2008 and 2021, we provide empirical evidence of the distinct use of language employed by domestic NGOs based in authoritarian regimes. We further show that the UNHRC itself is more likely to selectively engage with issues raised by such NGOs. Contact for working paper.
- ▸ Between Access and Advocacy: Rights Activism in Post-Conflict Côte d’Ivoire (with Leonardo Arriola, Arsène Brice Bado, and Justine Davis)
This article examines how rights activists in Côte d’Ivoire have recalibrated their strategies following the country’s transition from civil war to a more constrained political environment marked by shifting state-civil society relations and declining international support. Drawing on 100 semi-structured interviews with leaders of human rights and community-based organizations across the country, the study analyzes how activists interpret political risks and adjust their practices accordingly. Interviewees consistently describe constraints operating less through overt repression than through indirect administrative practices, heightened political sensitivities during electoral periods, and selective state responsiveness. Activists report that maintaining access to communities and authorities requires careful management of political perception, leading many groups to emphasize neutrality and avoid public confrontation. Leaders note the need to tailor advocacy language to different audiences -- using technical, evidence-based framing with authorities and conflict-sensitive communication with communities -- in order to prevent their work from being interpreted as partisan. While these adaptations help sustain organizational presence, interviewees also emphasize their costs: legal recognition barriers and uneven state engagement often limit their capacity to publicly denounce abuses or mobilize collective action. By centering activists’ own accounts, the article shows how depoliticization, mission diversification, and communicative flexibility function as practical responses to politically uncertain environments. In doing so, it contributes to broader debates on how rights activism is reshaped under contested civic space in Africa. Contact for working paper.
- ▸ The Gendered Process of Migration: Labor-Market Behavior of Left-Behind Wives in Mexico
This paper explores the effect of male emigration from Mexico on women's labor-market behavior. It borrows from existing gender, labour-market, and migration literature to point to the unintended negative effects of economic dependence on migrants. It uses nonlongitudinal data extracted via an ethnosurvey approach by the Mexican Migration Project (MMP). The results show that Mexican women's labor-market behavior may face normative constraints that limit their ability to undertake paid work. This is exacerbated by living in a household where the main provider is a migrant and whose absence results in an increased burden of unpaid domestic labor on his non-migrant spouse. This study contributes to a growing line of research suggesting that women's economic choices in developing countries can be shaped by gender norms rather than by economic or institutional characteristics alone. Contact for working paper.
