Despite the fact that female political participation has been steadily growing over time
with unseen effects on public policy, women representation in politics is substantially lower
than their proportion in society. Several studies have identified factors that could explain part
of the cross-national variation in women´s representation. However, there is still no
consensus on a baseline model for women´s representation. Moreover, none of these studies
has dealt with the possible endogenous relation of some of the factors considered. In this
paper we investigate the determinants of women´s representation, using a GMM system
estimation to address the possible endogeneity. To estimate our model, we employ a unique
data set that covers data for 191 countries from 1972 to 2004, in 8 different geographical
regions. We propose a dynamic model for women´s representation and calculate each
region´s steady state. We find that, keeping everything else constant, different regions have
different steady states. Although for most regions their steady-state is well above their current
percentage, without changing other variables, no region is going to have more than 22% of
women in parliament, with the exception of Scandinavian countries. Moreover, we find that
77 to 93% of the gap with Scandinavia is explained by female secondary enrollment, labor
force participation, fertility rates and political and economic rights.