Masters Theses

Date of Award

5-1999

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Major

Political Science

Major Professor

Yang Zhong

Committee Members

David Houston,Robert Maddox

Abstract

In this research electoral data from Thailand was used in order to test the concepts of district magnitude-the number of seats being contested in an electoral district-and party magnitude the number of seats a party realistically expects to win in an electoral district as regards their relevance to women being elected to office. Electoral data was used from all elections from 1979 to 1996. Regarding district magnitude Pearson's correlation values were generated in order to test for statistical significance between district magnitude and the women's percentages of district delegations to the Thai national Parliament. District magnitude was not found to have a consistent, statistically significant effect on women's election to Parliament.

Regarding party magnitude, Pearson's correlation values were generated in order to test for statistical significance between the number of fighting positions a political party had in a district and the percentage of women who held fighting positions in those districts. No statistically significant relationships were found. Further, a regression was run using the percentage of women who held fighting positions in electoral districts as the dependent variable and party magnitude and the Democrat party as independent variables. Again it was found that party magnitude had no statistically significant correlation with women being elected to national Parliament.

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