INTRODUCTION

In popular opinion, liberal democracy is associated with women's rights. However, gender scholars have found that this association is not strong in democratizing states. Outcomes on women's rights have usually been moderate, as in Chile and much of Latin America. Sometimes, outcomes on women's rights have been severely limited, as in Central and Eastern Europe. One exception is South Africa, a democratizing state with an outstanding record on women's rights legislation. Scholars have offered a number of explanations for these varied outcomes, but on closer inspection, their explanations prove insufficient. This book offers a new approach for explaining outcomes on women's rights in democratizing states by focusing on one facet of democratic quality: debate conditions. The just debate approach claims an increase in women's access, voice, and capacity for contestation in the leading institutions of the public sphere facilitate an increase in demands for women's rights. As public opinion shifts, governments facing elections in democratizing states will respond with policies and legislation advancing gender justice. The preceding chapters indicate that this claim has traction. They also offer important insights for deliberative theorists, feminist scholars, and scholars of democratization who analyze the quality of democracy.

After highlighting these contributions, this chapter discusses how and why debate conditions improve in democratizing states.