ABSTRACT
This chapter evaluates one of the commonly used measurements for political gender equality: representation of women in parliament. We investigate the statistical association between more women in parliament and fewer intrastate armed conflicts with a particular focus on East Asia. The chapter concludes that the political representation of women is an invalid indicator of political gender equality in East Asia. Parliamentary representation of women runs the risk of being forwarded as an oversimplified solution to a complex problem, in line with recent feminist critique of the instrumentalization of gender equality in general, and UNSCR 1325 in particular.
