Abstract:This paper empirically studies how women’s membership in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) affects the sex ratios in the period 1950-1990. Using data compiled from chronicles and other materials of 1200 counties, the 1990 census and the 2010 wave of the CGSS, we show that women’s political participation in 1950, indicated by the ratio of female members in the CCP in that year, increases the female-male ratio in the period 1950-1990. Subsequent finer studies for different sub-periods, and a panel study using the female party membership of 1950 as a strict instrumental variable for female party membership in different periods, confirm this result. We also demonstrate that women’s political participation has a more significant effect on children than on adults. This result is further confirmed by an individual-level study of the sex of the second birth using the one-child policy as a natural experiment. More explorations find that the positive impact of women’s political participation is not likely to be a result of women party members’ control of government policies, but more likely to be a result of their influences on societal perceptions about women.

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