Constitutions as a mirror of global norms? A quantitative analysis of equal rights articles within national constitutions

The founding of the United Nations permitted to define the discrimination of women as a problem concerning world society at large. Today, equal rights are considered as a global norm by which states and organisations are measured. The article focuses on the questions of how far global norms of equal rights govern national constitutions and on which kind of factors their national designs depend. For answering these questions we use a quantitative content analysis of family rights and equal rights in national constitutions (n = 164). In contrast to neo-institutionalist assumptions we found three clearly distinguished models of equal rights. They serve as dependent variables in a regression analysis which shows that equal rights evolve independently of the national degree of development. To the contrary, the cultural and religious tradition of a country, its inclusion into world society and the power of its civil society are far more decisive for their evolution.